By: Andrew Wing

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a 2021 American mockumentary film directed by Dean Fleischer Camp (in his feature directorial debut), who co-wrote the screenplay with Jenny Slate (Bob’s Burgers, Parks and Recreation) and Nick Paley. It is based on a series of shorts of the same name written by Slate and Fleischer Camp.

Slate reprises her voice role as Marcel, an anthropomorphic shell living with his grandmother Connie. Fleischer Camp, Rosa Salazar (Bird Box, Alita: Battle Angel), Thomas Mann (Project X, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), and Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet, Death Becomes Her) also star.

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2021, and began a limited release in the United States on June 24, 2022, before its wide release on July 15, by A24.

THE GOOD

Words can’t describe how happy I am to be writing this review. Ever since I saw the original trailer for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, I was immediately hooked. It was just oozing out with that famous A24 vibe that I love so much, and while I had never heard or seen the series of shorts of the same name before that apparently came out on YouTube in the early 2010s, I was still pumped to check this out. Unfortunately though, due to the small size of the film and just its odd premise that certainly wasn’t going to get a lot of people in the seats, I had to wait quite a while before it hit a theater near me, but nevertheless, it did and I was not going to miss my chance to check this out. So without further ado, was this another in the long line of great strange A24 movies, or was this one just too strange to make for a quality film? Keep reading to find out!

I won’t keep you waiting, this was most certainly another quality film from A24. This movie comes to us from Dean Fleischer Camp, and as previously mentioned, he came to national fame after he made the series of shorts that starred the same character that became viral back in 2011. And let me just say this to get the ball rolling, Dean Fleischer Camp is a very talented filmmaker with a unique style. Let’s be real, who thinks of something like this? A talking shell named Marcel? I mean come on! But despite the film’s never-before-seen kind of premise, the movie just worked.

I loved how Dean Fleischer Camp directed this film so much with its mockumentary style and the stop-motion characters. And I will touch on some of the more technical elements later in the review, but his screenplay here was amazing. Sure it’s a thin and simple screenplay, and while that might’ve been a detriment to some, I just thought the story we were told here was extremely sweet and it also had a great message. It just had so much charm and I fell in love with Marcel. I mean the cuteness alone of the character he created will be able to hold the entire movie together for some people. At the end of the day, I was just so impressed with what we got from Fleischer Camp and I’m so curious to see what he does next if anything at all because this was his passion project for sure.

Going off the screenplay, this movie was really funny too. There were a lot of good jokes, and running bits and the movie just had its own sense of humor. The delivery of the dialogue was amazing and the person who did that the best was undoubtedly the voice actor behind Marcel the Shell, Jenny Slate. I recently reviewed Slate’s other film that came out this year in I Want You Back (see my full review here), which I really enjoyed thanks in large part to Slate’s performance and she did it again here. She just brought this character to life in the warmest way possible. Call me crazy, but I really think years from now it could be looked back on as one of the better vocal performances ever because every word that came out of her mouth just made this one of the most endearing characters we’ve ever seen on screen. Maybe it was her improvising or it was included in the script, but there were so many ‘ums’ and other stutters that Marcel did throughout that just added to that level of charm I’ve mentioned now a couple of times.

Now onto the technical elements of this movie that I was blown away by. First with the stop-motion animation which I thought was incredible. I have no idea how they did it, but I will just say it blew my socks off and all the shells looked legitimately real and I hope they get awarded for it. Also, I thought the score we got here from Disasterpeace was really great! It blends in so well that at first I didn’t even notice it but the farther into the movie I got the more I paid attention to it and it just fit the film perfectly. And lastly, the way this film was shot was just flawless in my opinion thanks to the cinematographer Bianca Cline. The way it was shot made the house that it takes place in feel really huge, wondrous, and just big, and I thought that was so smart so we as an audience could try and put ourselves in Marcel’s shoes.

THE BAD

Spoiler alert, I really liked Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. However, to put it in simplest terms, this movie just might not work for everyone. I thought it was charming, super cute, and funny, and that made the film worthwhile for me. However, some people may need more than just those things I just mentioned. Another area of critique could be that the movie was incredibly predictable because once you learn the plot, you just know where this character is going to end up and how the film was going to end. For me though, that really didn’t take away too much from the movie for me as I still had a really good time with it.

Lastly, and this is less of a critique, but more just something I thought could’ve brought this film to the next level, and it deals with Dean Fleischer Camp. So Fleischer Camp not only wrote and directed this, but he also acts in the movie as he is the one that’s filming Marcel in this mockumentary-style movie. And to tell you the truth, I was just so interested in his character if I can even call him that, that I wanted more from him. In the third act we definitely sort of see the camera flip on him and I really liked when that happened, but it sort of didn’t go there fully and I just thought it could’ve gone a little further.

THE VERDICT

Thanks to an amazing voice performance from Jenny Slate that created one of the cutest and most endearing characters I have ever seen on the big screen, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On was remarkable and one of the most charming movies I’ve seen in quite a while.

Slate definitely stole the show, but the stop-motion animation here was fascinating too. And as for the director Dean Fleischer Camp, I thought he crushed it in his feature directorial debut. The story we got here was very simple and cute, but still I was emotionally pulled into it and I loved the lesson the film taught. It’s truly a movie meant for audiences of any age range to enjoy.