Oh dear crap, this is a good film. Marcel the Shell with Shoes on (2021) is about a one inch tall seashell who leads a secluded life with a ready, naïve wit.
Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, he also wrote the screenplay with Jenny Slate and Nick Paley. It’s an excellent stop-motion/live-action mockumentary with humour and some sad moments, making it ideal viewing for all ages.
Heart-Warming Funny/Sad Excellence in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
We’ll note straight up we think the film will go down as a cult classic. It’s a bit like the claymation Mary and Max (2009) with its clever wit and poignant overtones.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On plays out like a documentary. Filmmaker Dean (played by Dean Fleischer Camp) moves into an Airbnb following a divorce from his wife.
There he rather unexpectedly meets a one-inch tall talking shell Marcel (Slate) who shares the home with his grandmother Nana Connie (Isabella Rossellini).
Those two have befriended some local insects and also enjoy watching 60 Minutes together, which is hosted by Lesley Stahl.
Dean starts filming Marcel, who is a bit unsure about things to begin with. Then he warms up to the process and he introduces his little life and routine.
After Dean starts uploading the clips to YouTube, a huge audience of 20+ million viewers start following the antics of the little shell.
Marcel doesn’t react well to his newfound stardom, but eventually warms to it and sees the benefits of offering his version of the world to people.
As this plays out, Nana Connie’s health deteriorates. But she remains in good spirits and is happy to offer life advice to Marcel.
But his life is very topsy turvy, with his inadvertent influencing online bringing the attention of the 60 Minutes crew. Eventually, he agrees to appear on the show.
This is how the narrative all plays out, really.
It owes some credit to Nick Parks’ influential Creature Comforts series from the 1990s, but it’s a very inventive, sweet, and clever little film. There are just lots of engaging moments such as this.
However, we must note amongst the humour are a lot of poignant moments. It’s not a huge spoiler to note Nana Connie doesn’t make it to the end of the film.
Marcel’s grieving, and his recovery from that, and his push to understand his place in the world are all handled with compassion. It’s superbly well judged from the writing team.
Guaranteed to make WUSSES cry, but surely even the most hardened of toxic masculinity geezers would stop to think for a moment when watching the film (before, obviously, hitting the gym to PUMP SOME IRON).
On another note, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has an excellent soundtrack. It was by Disasterpeace, who began his career working on indie game soundtracks such as the Flatland-inspired FEZ (2012).
It’s a tribute to the talent involved that its 90 minute running time isn’t a problem. At no point does the film outstay its welcome.
In fact, you come out of it wanting more.
Not that we think there should be a sequel, as its ending is another brilliantly judged and inspiring moment. You may look at the poster and not expect much profundity here, but you’d be mistaken there, sonny Jim.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has it all.
It’s funny, sweet, poignant, and a heart-warming story about life and all it has to throw at you. One viewing and you’ll come out the other side with a stronger appreciation of the world.
The Production of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
https://youtu.be/ucgaD1aEeuE?si=V0uYIkCCDx52i97m
The idea was created by Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate, who were married between 2012 and 2016. Their divorce served as a plot point in the film.
Initially, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On ran as a trilogy of short films in 2010. Two further shorts launched in 2011 an d 2014, which were complemented by a storybook that also launched.
The feature film got the greenlight in the mid-2010s with Fleischer Camp and Slate saying the whole process took about seven years to fund and then produce.
Jenny Slate is a comedian and actor who’s starred on Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, and Bob’s Burgers. She voiced Marcel and Isabella Rossellini was Nana Connie.
Fleischer Camp directed (and also stars) in the film. He told the Roger Ebert site in the July 2022 interview Charming Enthusiasm and Inherent Heartbreak:
“We would record for a couple of days with Jenny in character as Marcel, and we would get all the stuff that we had written but then we would punch it up or we’d say, ‘Oh this isn’t quite landing. Let’s think of a better joke for this.’ Or sometimes Jenny would just go on a tear that really cracked us all up.
And then Nick and I would go back into this editing and writing phase. We both come from editing so it was very comfortable for us to pore over all this audio we’d recorded in those couple of days and pick out the gems and then begin writing again. And we would write for another three months and then we’d do another couple of days of audio recording.
We did that for two and a half years. By the end of that, we had both a finished screenplay that sounded for all the world like a documentary and an almost locked audio play because we were recording the entire time. Doing those two things in tandem allowed us to write to these characters who we were getting to know as we went along.”
All the effort seems worth it!
The budget of the film isn’t clear, but it had a box office return of $7 million. The film premiered at Telluride Film Festival in September 2021, launched in American cinemas from 2022, but only hit UK ones from February 2023.
Critically acclaimed, the film was nominated for the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.
It won a batch of awards, including the New York Film Critics’ Best Animated Film. It won many other independent, smaller awards too although the bloody Oscars just had to go and ruddy snub it, eh?
