When Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp first started work on the short Marcel the Shell with Shoes On they were an item. By the time this feature-length fourth iteration of Marcel’s adventures arrived on the screens in 2021 they were not. Why the film has themes of break-up, heartbreak and the power of relationships is anyone’s guess – insert your own speculative gloss here.
It doesn’t need a backstory of personal woe to make it in the harsh everyday world. It’s the perfectly charming, sweet, sad story of – borrowing Wikipedia’s unbeatable description – “an anthropomorphic seashell outfitted with a single googly eye and a pair of miniature shoes”. Slate voices one-inch-high Marcel as a smart, impressionable and tragedy-tinged optimist who lives with his grandmother, Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini).
They are the last survivors of a once thriving community. The rest disappeared when the human occupants of the house where they live a secretive, Borrower-like existence had a blazing row and split up. As the male component of this couple/ex-couple moved out, he swept up all Marcel’s family, friends and wider community into his suitcases and took them with him, to who knows where. An accident – the sock drawer is where the tiny creatures would hide every time the humans got loud.
Now, as the camera of Dean winks into life, this same house is now an Airbnb, Dean is also at the wrong end of a relationship break-up and has somehow got to know little Marcel. From here, the conceit is that Dean decides to make a documentary about his unexpected new find – a sentient googly-eyed seashell is worth documenting, after all – and uploads bulletins (art imitating life) onto YouTube, where Generation TikTok are soon taking notice, as are the American TV networks.
This TikTok/TV angle is all a bit of a sideshow, as is the emotional arc of the will he/won’t he of Marcel tracking down his missing family/friends/community. The real backbone of this movie is the relationship between Dean and the inquisitive Marcel. It’s one of negotiation, mutual fascination, respect and, being a bit more hard-nosed, reciprocal usefulness – Dean will potentially help Marcel track down the missing; Marcel will allow Dean’s bruised emotions to recover by giving him something distracting to do.
It is cute, but it never quite tips over into twee, thanks in large part to the way it’s done. It helps that Slate is a comedian, so knows how to take Marcel off in directions you might not expect. And it helps that Fleischer Camp’s directorial style sticks firmly to the idea that this is an ad hoc, point and shoot, autofocus kind of deal, the camera never appearing too artful or tasteful or editorial even when it is.
The rules about qualifying for Oscar consideration as an animation rather than live action are arcane and all about percentages. I have no idea how they work out a percentage for a film like this when every second of it is live action with an animated layer seamlessly overlaid. Percentage of screen real eastate filled? However they do it, this film did qualify as an animation and was up against Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, so had no chance whatsoever.
Pinocchio is more obviously an animated animated movie so fair enough. But it’s perhaps the betwixt and between nature of Marcel the movie that is its greatest strength. Every time Dean’s little dog – “is he really your best friend?” Marcel asks incredulously, as if something has gone badly wrong with a man that he thinks of a dog that way – sniffs towards Marcel, perhaps seeing him as a tasty treat in the making, we tense up. Which means it works – the whole thing works.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2023
