Movie Reaction: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Formula: The Jerk * Grey Gardens

(Look, there's not a good formula for this. I tried. It's part documentary, part search for family movie, part comedy all in a weird package)

 

Sometimes a movie is as simple as "let creative people be creative". Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is Jenny Slate doing a funny voice. It's Slate riffing as this tiny shell character. It's the production team coming up with inventive ways that a 1-inch creature would survive around the house. This movie is nonsense, but it's nonsense with so much sincerity and ingenuity that it works.

 

As the title suggests, Marcel is a shell with shoes and an eye. He lives with his similarly structured grandmother at a house that has become an Airbnb. When an amateur filmmaker moves in and decides to make a documentary about Marcel, it becomes a story about how Marcel lost the rest of his family then a quest to find them. Largely, it's an authentic looking mockumentary that appears like the filmmaker started recording and hoped the story will find itself.

 

Perhaps my favorite thing about the movie is how clearly most of the time it's Jenny Slate trying to get director and costar Dean Fleischer-Camp to laugh. This is so clearly a project made by friends (and in Slate and Fleischer-Camp's case, ex-spouses who are on good terms). I know it's a proper movie by professionals who know how to give the appearance of spontaneity. I assume most of this is scripted, because with the animation and story, it has to be. But I can feel the writing sessions in the movie. This was an idea that grew naturally from a funny voice to a YouTube short to a film made outside the major studios. This movie didn't have to get made. It was a pleasure that they got to make it.

 

Slate's voice as Marcel is a masterstroke. She doesn't entirely disappear in it, which is why so much of her humor is still in it, but it's a voice that allows for so much vulnerability too. It's impossible not to love Marcel within a couple minutes. And getting Isabella Rossellini as Marcel's grandmother is great too. I always expect Rossellini to be a more serious performer than she really is. She's actually quite funny and her voice has a lot of warmth.

 

I'm a big fan of movies that try and take a bit too far only to discover that they have even more ideas than they can fit in it. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On should be a short film, a skit, or a few YouTube videos, but Slate, Fleischer-Camp, and company find a really lovely hook with Marcel's search for his family, never lose the thread of what makes this funny, and keep coming up with new ideas until the very end. It's a genuinely happy and good-spirited movie that leaves some room for introspection. I do think it hangs on a couple minutes too long at the end, but I understand why it does. And it's a self-selecting kind of movie. If you are someone who is watching this, you're probably someone who would really enjoy it.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend