Sweetness Abounds: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

In limited release, Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Craig’s “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” is a joy. There were more moments where I laughed out loud than I expected there to be. There were also gentle, reflective moments and exquisite poignance throughout its brief running time. 

Based on a character created by Slate and Fleischer-Craig in a series of YouTube videos, it seemed improbable that there would be enough to carry a feature film. Or so I thought; which is why they are feature filmmakers and I am not. With a script by Slate, Fleischer-Craig, and Nick Paley, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” is a lovely surprise during a season mostly known for explosions and fight scenes.

Marcel, voiced by Slate is a prepossessed, intelligent and articulate shell with one eye, a mouth and two feet with red sneakers. He and his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) inhabit an AirBnB as the last of their family. Dean, a documentary filmmaker shows up to stay for awhile as he house hunts after a breakup with his girlfriend and begins interviewing Marcel and sculpting a documentary around Marcel and Connie. 

We see how the two shells have navigated the world after the people who lived there before left and built a series of routines and diversions, the most important of which is watching Sixty Minutes, particularly the segments with Lesley Stahl. Rossellini gives Connie a distinctly Old World wisdom and her concern and love for Marcel is unforced. Slate’s Marcel is a small, slightly raspy just-loud-enough-for-conversation and frankly, endearing. Marcel is a singular, plucky being who may think he is smarter than he is, but you sense that’s just armor. A shell, if you will. 

Marcel and Connie in the garden.

Dean is accepted into Marcel and Connie’s world and comes with his own baggage. He dodges revealing too much of himself or about his breakup, but Connie knows well what he has been through, even if Marcel finds Dean occasionally frustrating in his reluctance to open up more. 

As Dean learns more about Marcel’s family and how they vanished after the couple disappeared (moved), Marcel tells him that he thinks the whole family except for Connie and himself were moved all at once when the man emptied out a drawer everyone hid in at moments of crisis (arguments between the man and the woman) and dumped in a box. 

Marcel very much believes that his family is still intact, just somewhere else and surely there could be some way to find them. Dean doesn’t seem to enthusiastic, at first. He has been posting video footage of Marcel on YouTube to huge response and while he does not seem to be exploiting the relationship, Dean does not seem too vested in it, either. Not enough to jump right into making an effort to find Marcel’s kin, anyway. 

Until one day when takes Marcel for a ride around Los Angeles. It’s unfair to laugh at another’s misfortune but Marcel’s car-sickness is one of the funniest and dare I say, charming things I’ve seen. Something about a tiny little shell yakking that is simultaneously hilarious and cute (it’s not a big barf, more like a sudden tiny puddle of yellow ochre paint). They wind up in the hills overlooking the city and Marcel begins to understand just how large the world outside his house is and is dumbstruck by learning that the world is full of similarly large metropolitan areas. He is humbled and not a little dejected. 

Returning to the AirBnB, they encounter a group of people posing in front of the house and discover Connie has fallen off the clothes dryer where she had her living area. Her shell is damaged and it does not help that Dean’s dog attacks her, as well, leading Dean to convince his ex to keep the dog until he can find a place. Connie’s condition is precarious, but she rallies little by little with a bandaid taped over her. 

Connie is somewhat disoriented but does her best to persevere. In the meantime, in response to Marcel and Dean’s YouTube campaign for help to find Marcel’s family, Sixty Minutes contacts them directly about doing a feature on Marcel. They agree, but on the day the Sixty Minutes crew arrives, Marcel is flushed with anxiety and worry about whether Connie can take it. In a stern, if gentle talk, Connie tells Marcel not to use her as an excuse for his not growing in the world. It’s not “tough love”, just a gentle admonishment from someone who knows more of what life has to offer. 

Dean lets the crew in and Connie and Marcel are starstruck meeting their hero Lesley. Each scene in the film builds deftly builds on what comes before but the Sixty Minutes section is both the point at which Marcel’s star rises and Connie’s fades out. Her quiet departure from the world is one of the most moving I’ve seen. 

Dean and Marcel don’t realize that Connie has passed until after the filming and the moments after her burial are delicate and poetic. 

Dean finds a house and Sixty Minutes has found Marcel’s family. It is a giddy moment when Marcel finds his family in the sock drawer after Larissa (Rosa Salazar) has come up from Guatemala to confront her ex Mark (Thomas Mann) who has the family at his place. There is a wonderful feeling of triumph as the family is reunited back at the AirBnB and watching these shells “ice skate” through the dust on a table top. We also get to see Dean’s new house in the interim. The final scene in the laundry room with Marcel closes the film with a satisfying wistfulness. 

This film is one of the very few that manages to balance whimsy and wit with dealing with themes of longing, loss, aging, and death. At no point is it sentimentally twee or treacly. Nor does it treat any of its themes with satirical dismissal. There is nothing dismissive in the film, at all. Its earnestness is genuine and lends substance to the narrative’s arc. 

The wonder of a being that has a ball of lint attached to the end of a thread for a pet is both funny and enchanting. Or Connie’s working in the garden or using an egg beater to shake ripe oranges from a tree. All of this reads on a spectrum from cute (not a pejorative) to whimsical to that kind of observational comedy that makes you look twice at the world around you.

Bianca Cline’s cinematography and Eric Adkins’ stop-motion animation support the story exquisitely. If you haven’t seen her short films, do so as soon as you can. Adkins might be best known for his “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” (one of my favorites), but he has also done a substantial amount of work over the years from “Sponge-Bob SquarePants” to “Robot Chicken” and more. I mention this because it only adds to how all the participants came together to produce a unified tale. There isn’t a bum note in the whole shebang. 

I’m happy I saw it on the big screen but can’t wait to see it when it comes to streaming so I can watch it again. And again.