A good 70% of The Walk is garbage. Between the hideous choice to have Phillipe Petit (Joseph Gordon Levitt putting on his best French accent) narrate his life story from the torch of a terribly-rendered CGI Statue of Liberty and the objectively ham-fisted dialogue that socks its themes on the nose as often as possible, The Walk is filled with delinquent script problems and even more face-palming directorial choices (a la endless narration from the f*cking Statue of Liberty). However when Petit mounts his wire, strung between the world’s tallest buildings and begins his walk, the problems fade like morning fog into a harrowing, white-knuckle sequence of sky-high daring that makes Evel Knievel himself look soft. But is that enough to account for the dumbed-down, borderline horribly executed set-up? Of course not.

Having reached overnight celebrity for a stunt that had him traipsing between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, Philippe Petit was lionized for contemporary audiences in James Marsh’s Academy Award-winning biographical documentary Man on Wire. The film captured the imagination of audiences by blending actual footage of the walk in with Petit’s testimonials detailing the production that went into pulling off his daredevil feat. Upon news of The Walk‘s release, many questioned why such a story need be retold when it had already been done so admirably and rightfully so. As a film, The Walk is predicated on one thing and one thing alone: its ability to put us in the driver’s seat; to allow its audience to join Petit on that tightwire and glance down at the 110-story abyss below; and in that capacity it has succeeded. In all others, it’s pretty much failed.

Robert Zemeckis, helmer of the infinitely popular Back to the Future trilogy and captain to the infinitely unpopular string of mid-2000s 3D performance-capture-gone-wrong animation failures (The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol), in all his infinite, misguided, fluky wisdom, snatched up the rights to tell Petit’s story. Zemeckis environs Petit’s hyper-motivated madman antics in a family-friendly feature that hews much closer to the cloyingly hammy Babe: Pig in the City than the dramatic aspects attempted in his last feature, Flight. In many ways, The Walk is essential Babe: Frog in the City.

Enlisted in morphing the tale of a megalomaniac wire-walker into an universal story of “achieving your dream no matter how batsh*t crazy it is,” Joseph Gordon-Levitt is our Frog. Born and raised in Paris, Levitt’s Petit is won over by a traveling circus, particularly by their gravity-defying stuntman, at the impressionable young age of 8. This chance encounter starts him on a journey to becoming a true artist of walking on wires. Upon investing all of his time into perfecting the craft, Petit is jettisoned by his parents who use a carrot metaphor to explain that their son is nothing more than a lost cause. “Valking on vires von’t pay ze bills mon petit Petit.” Ejected from the cozy carrot abode, Petit is forced to perform in the streets to make a living but discovers it is his bread and butter. Along the way, he allies with seasoned circus performer Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley) and photographer Jean-Louis Clément Sibony, while forging a romantic interest in Annie (Charlotte Le Bon) – the film’s totally Bechdel-test flunking female character.

JGL’s efforts are admirable – upon joining the production, the actor had no formal wire experience though grew quite skillful training under Petit himself; Levitt also became fluent in French under the tutelage of co-star Charlotte Le Bon – though we never see the celebrity disappear and, in Petit’s words, reappear as an entirely different performer. Rather, we see Joe with striking blue contacts and a fuzzy reddish wig – wholly unnatural features that make him look somewhat like Zemeckis‘ off-putting animated creations. Levitt’s attempts to turn the Frenchman’s acidic, eccentric personality into something larger than life – a modern day Tramp-meets-Iron-Man – is the right choice, but the film lacks the narrative support beams to keep it from looking, oh I don’t know, silly. So very, very silly. In many parts thanks to the puzzlingly dopey script, the performance can’t escape feeling like it’s a mere caricature because, in a movie this cartoonish, that is what it looks like.

As Petit states, being up on the wire is freeing and, as if by magic, when Levitt mounts the wire, the film is freed from its multitude of problems. Likely because the narration cease (at least for a little while), the film really takes flight, allowing the hubris to mix with the calm. There’s a life-affirming cocktail of emotions that rest on that wire – rebellion, expression, serenity, anxiety – and Levitt truly soars when he’s finally tight-lipped. Soon after dismounting the wire though, the film has to punt us in the face with its heavy-handed themes, delivering one splendidly overwrought line after another. When one character contends of the buildings and Petit’s walk between them, “You gave them new life; perhaps you even gave them a soul,” you’re ready to punch your way out of the theater. And then the last line of the film hits, paired with a symbolic 9-11 slap in the face, and you can’t help but cradle your affronted intelligence.

CONCLUSION: A shambolic effort that matches dazzling sequences of high-wire daring with doltish storytelling, Robert Zemeckis‘ latest is an interesting failure but a failure nonetheless. The walk segment of ‘The Walk’ earns its IMAX format but everything else comes up totally (and tonally) empty-handed.