Marcel the Shell with Shoes On Finds a Home
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is one of the funniest and most charming movies of 2022. For anyone familiar with the internet shorts created by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate in 2010, that’s not anything like a surprise. What is a surprise is that Marcel the Shell also manages to be one of the most emotionally substantial movies of the year.
Jenny Slate voices Marcel, a small shell with—you guessed it—shoes. With his red sneakers and a glued on googly eye, Marcel spends his days spitting out cute one liners and noting on what day to day life is like as a small shell. That may sound trite, twee, or exhausting over a feature length film, but Slate and Fleischer-Camp bring an honest depth to the story.
Marcel the Shell is all about home—a fitting theme for a shell to ponder. But the home being sought in the movie isn’t shelter but community, the people we build a life with. Marcel has lost the majority of his community, save for his grandmother, Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini with what must be the most gravitas ever given to an inanimate object).
The other primary character is Dean, himself, who discovers Marcel and Nana Connie while staying at the house as an Airbnb. Led by his curiosity and ample free time, Dean films Marcel as he shares insights into the, well, minutiae of his life: Marcel motors around in a tennis ball, uses a stand mixer to shake fruit off of a tree (along with a particularly, um, creative way of weaving a rope), and cares for his pet lint, while making sure that Nana Connie is staying healthy.
In time—and in a refraction of real life—Dean’s videos of Marcel gather a massive online following of fans, who show their admiration the way online fans know best: social media emojis, quoting Marcel’s lines to each other, and making their own videos. Some of them even find the Airbnb and show up at the house, though this only leads to some minor destruction, not any real connection.
It seemed like Marcel was discovering a new form of community, but it was a mere vapor. As the story begins to orbit around this vacuum of community, the emotional core of Marcel the Shell grows weightier. We learn the couple who lived there previously had a fight, leading the man to move out, inadvertently carrying Marcel and Nana Connie’s family and friends away with him. Now they are without the once flourishing life that once used to define their home.
After their breakup, the woman turned the house into an Airbnb, and Dean is using it as a temporary place to stay after his own divorce. This doesn’t merely add a layer to the motif of broken relationships—it reflects and interrogates Fleischer-Camp and Slate’s own divorce. The pair were married until 2016, when they separated. With this in mind, Marcel the Shell becomes a fascinating portrait of loss, growth, and meaningful ways to move on. While the sweetness of Marcel the Shell is its calling card, the bitterness woven in is honest.
The film observes the effect of loneliness on humans (and shells), as well as the shock that comes when relationships tear apart. Marcel and Dean help each other grow and look forward simply by enjoying each other’s company. They bring each other delight, and in that delight there is some whisper of hope for how things could change.
Even so, good company is not community, and they both recognize this. But they can care for each other here, as well. So Dean helps Marcel find clues to the new whereabouts of his community; Marcel in turn pulls Dean from his inward reticence.
Both Fleischer-Camp and Slate deserve a great deal of credit for their wit and creativity. Crafty and cute visual design aside, Slate’s vocal work is the key to making Marcel an unforgettable character. It’s hard to imagine anyone else making the constant one liners land so surprisingly and effectively. Fleischer-Camp continues to experiment with the blend of stop motion animation and real world cinematography, incorporating animals, car rides, and even a 60 Minutes news crew into shots with Marcel.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Isabella Rossellini again. Despite all the real world layering of this film, perhaps the biggest meta joke of the whole movie is getting an actor of Rossellini’s renown to voice a stop motion shell. But it’s not just a joke. She brings real sadness and weariness to the aging Nana Connie.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a tender yet truly sharp movie. On its surface, it appears to be simply cute—and it delivers on that promise—but it is affecting and honest in ways few animated movies achieve. Underneath the visual gags about breadrooms and skating rinks on dusty tables is a real sadness. But there’s real hope, too. Marcel the Shell contemplates on what it is to lose one’s community and what it means to find it anew. If you still choose to resist Marcel’s charm, well, you must be “a special kind of idiot.”
