Film review: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is pure joy from start to finish
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
★★★★★
You never know what you might find if you peer too closely into the corners of an Airbnb, but it’s unlikely to be anything as delightful as Marcel, the tiny hero of (PG).
When film-maker Dean (played by the film’s director, Dean Fleischer Camp) moves into an Airbnb, he’s amused to discover the self-sufficient Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate), a hermit crab shell with one big eye (and shoes on), who lives in the Airbnb with his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini).
Shy by nature, but insatiably curious, Marcel is happy to be filmed, and especially when Dean suggests posting his short films online to help Marcel find his extended family, all of whom disappeared when the previous residents moved out (they were, Marcel surmises, hiding in someone’s pocket, or maybe the sock drawer).
Written and directed by Dean Fleisher Camp, is an utterly charming animation — Marcel’s world is the rather prosaic (but real) surroundings of a suburban house, into which the stop-motion animation of Marcel and Connie are inserted.
The early stages are delightfully whimsical as Marcel explains how his world works — he tends to travel long distances in a modified tennis ball, for example, and in lieu of a pet he hauls around some lint on a leash. But gradually the tone gets a little darker: Connie has grown forgetful, a fact that the smart but innocent Marcel fails to recognise as old age entering its terminal phase.
Superbly animated, by turns funny and tragic, is pure joy from start to finish.
(cinema release)
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