I was preparing to go back into my COVID bubble. The B5 variant is floating around, and I have a doctor’s appointment and am seeing older relatives in a week. I’d like to be able to actually take care of the doctor’s visit and see my parents, so I figured I could sit a week out. But then I saw Marcel the Shell with Shoes On was finally in my neck of the woods, and I had really been looking forward to that. I figured an early morning matinee for the arthouse flick would work, and there were only three other people at my screening.
Oh, and to make things even more noteworthy to me, I saw the Chiodo Brothers’ production company was involved, and in fact were responsible for all the stop-motion work with Marcel and his family of talking knickknacks. I mean, those were the guys who wrote, directed, and produced Killer Klowns from Outer Space…
Marcel (voice of Jenny Slate) is a talking shell, one with a pair of tiny shoes and one big, googly eye. He lives in a house, one rented as an Airbnb with just his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini). His house is currently being rented by Dean (co-writer and director Dean Fleischer Camp), an amateur filmmaker who opts to film Marcel as he goes about his daily business. Marcel and Connie were once part of a large family of shells, but the others all disappeared one day while Marcel and Connie were watching their favorite TV show, 60 Minutes. Dean’s video soon goes viral, and he and Marcel figure that maybe they can use Marcel’s internet fame to find the rest of his family. It even gets the attention of 60 Minutes and Connie’s favorite correspondent Leslie Stahl.
However, Marcel’s general naivete also means he is especially cautious about Connie, his only remaining relative. Concerns for her health have Marcel suddenly not so interested in putting himself out there in any attempt to find the rest of his family. The big conflict is less about Marcel’s finding his family as Marcel’s learning to put himself out there to at least try to find them. Can Marcel bring himself out of his fears long enough to find his lost family and rebuild the community that even he knows all shells need?
So, this one was just delightful. The movie doesn’t really bother to explain things like where Marcel came from or even the basics of his anatomy. He apparently needs to eat and sleep, and his kind can die, but that’s about all the movie explains. That’s fine. The movie is more about how Marcel sees the world and his own concerns and fears. Granted, I wasn’t sure if Marcel’s internet fame was because people initially assumed he was some kind of animation or special effect or whether or not he was a real talking shell. The movie doesn’t need to answer those questions, so just don’t expect those answers.
As for the movie itself, it’s beautiful. This is a movie where talking shells moved me emotionally. Grandma Connie has some bits of wisdom, and there’s a lot of creativity in how Marcel and Connie go about their daily routines. Since they do need to eat, they have a system to get themselves food, and both Marcel and Connie have hobbies. As for the humans, well, we don’t often get a good look at them because this is Marcel’s world, and he’s not very big. Marcel, however, is just so charming that the human characters just don’t matter. This is a character study for something that might have been purchased at a flea market, and it’s just so sweet and adorable that yeah, I was glad to break my bubble for this one.
Grade: A
0 Comments