Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Year: 2021
Rating: PG
Length: 90 minutes / 1.50 hours
The documentary format is so ingrained as a genre of film that it can be quite easy to take the same visual style and plot structure and apply it to something that doesn’t actually exist. In the case of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021), the audience gets a glimpse into this peculiar little creature named Marcel (Jenny Slate) who lives in an Airbnb with his grandmother—both of which are shells that have shoes and can talk. Equally charming and meta, this film is a cute piece of fluff.
While I never saw the short films this movie was based on, they must have been significant enough at the time (roughly a decade ago) for me to feel like this was a familiar piece of media that I had somehow missed from my childhood. The stop-motion style of these small creatures helps to show the challenges they face in a world that is suited to creatures much larger than they are. It’s amusing to see the solutions Marcel and his grandmother created just to live their lives in this Airbnb.
Plot-wise, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On gets a little meta with the 60 Minutes angle. What’s more frustrating is how the ending doesn’t really carry much of an impact because it begs the question of how thoroughly the humans actually tried to help Marcel find his family in the first place. Of course, this is also on top of the “get a divorced couple back together” subplot that feels played out in this day and age. Still, regardless of these flaws, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a cute little movie that any fan of mockumentaries should watch.
A cute mockumentary with a fairly basic plot, I give Marcel the Shell with Shoes On 4.0 stars out of 5.
