I watched Marcel the Shell with Shoes On on a sunny Saturday at the Onyx Theater in Nevada City. I had gone to the Yuba River with some friends that day and we felt sun-kissed and jovial as we visited a few shops in town to pass the time before the movie. We were almost late for Marcel because we stopped to have a few slices at Miner Moe’s, the pizza shop next door, and became engrossed in a game of checkers beside their fake fireplace.
Walking into The Onyx, the staff greeted us warmly. They had been wondering if the four missing online-ticket-holders would show up. The cramped concessions stand of the Onyx has a classy, golden-era decor that feels very much inspired by a true love for the old-school cinema experience. We purchased some organic popcorn, sprinkled some of the provided nutritional yeast on top, and tried to continue our conversation in whispers as we stepped into the very small (but cozy) theater.
I didn’t know much about this movie going in, but when I saw Jenny Slate’s name on the poster in the lobby, I felt a joyous thrill. I’ve loved every project I’ve seen her in, and the first two movies she did with director Gillian Robespierre, Obvious Child (2014) and Landline (2017), are some of my all-time favorites.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a mockumentary in which a live-action human, Dean (Dean Fleischer-Camp, who is also the director and co-writer with Slate) decides to make a documentary about an anthropomorphic seashell that walks and talks (via stop-motion animation) and lives in the AirBnb Dean is renting. Marcel tells Dean about his life in the empty house with his grandmother Nana Connie (voiced by the incredible Isabella Rossellini) and about how he was separated from the rest of his tiny family of anthropomorphic objects when the human couple who used to live in the house split up and accidentally packed all the other tinies into a suitcase when they left.
It is a movie that takes great pleasure in introducing you to its inspired ideas for how a one-inch hermit crab shell (with shoes on) would inhabit a human-sized house in a suburban neighborhood, and uses the documentary format to inspire the viewer to fall in love with and become fiercely protective of its miniature subject. Marcel uses a tennis ball as a windowless car, smears honey on his tiny feet so that he can walk up walls, and plays music using an uncooked piece of macaroni pasta as an improvised flute. He is curious about the world at large, loves to talk about his life with his grandma, and to “perform” for Dean. In other words, this movie turns the charm on at full force from the very beginning and definitely wants you to cry over the heartbreaking life lessons learned by the young shell.
When the film started, I immediately suspected that Jenny Slate voiced Marcel the Shell, but was not certain. His raspy, teensy voice sounds so authentic that it’s hard to imagine his voice actor does not sound like that in real life (although it’s also hard to imagine someone who does). But as the movie goes on, the similarities between Marcel and Jenny’s theatrical persona become more and more obvious.
In a lot of her on-screen performances, Slate brings a sense of child-like wonder and enthusiasm to adult situations. A lot of her characters seem like they are trying to navigate growing up and making mature decisions, while not losing touch with their inner-child that still loves gross-out humor, asking silly questions and just being a quirky, enjoy-your-weirdness person. This through line in her film career leads perfectly into playing Marcel. This is a coming-of-age story dedicated to following an innocent (you might even say sheltered) little shell who needs to find the courage to chase his dreams, even if it means leaving the safety of his home. Jenny’s gross-out comedy is mostly replaced by twee (save for a bit about Marcel repeatedly vomiting due to motion sickness the first time he goes on a car ride), which makes sense and works well for this character.
In her Netflix comedy special/documentary (also directed by the amazing Gillian Robespierre), Stage Fright (2019), Slate practices a lot of the types of scenes and beats that would eventually make it into Marcel the Shell. For the special, Gillian and her crew interviewed Jenny and her close family members at their family home, and Jenny talks about her experience growing up in that house, much like Marcel does. Early on, she is talking to her dad and says “You know what’s funny about this is that as a little girl I probably didn’t know what documentaries were but this is what I would imagine, that the movie just comes to your house. [laughs] You know what I mean? They just show up to your house one day and they make a movie about you. [pauses] I was always like, hoping for it. [to the director] Okay, are we ready to go? Okay!” This line could very well have been said by Marcel, who spends a lot of his movie telling Dean about how he thinks the world works and is delighted to discover that lots of people are watching and liking the videos of Marcel that Dean starts publishing online during the story.
Marcel’s grandma, Nana Connie, is named after Jenny Slate’s real grandma, who appears in Stage Fright sitting on the couch with Jenny, telling her how excited she is to watch Jenny’s next movie and that her friends have already watched it. Jenny says “Don’t watch that one, I get eaten by an alien.” Marcel’s Nana Connie, played by Isabella Rossellini, has two big loves in life: her garden and her grandson Marcel. Nana Connie has a special connection with the bugs and worms that inhabit her garden, which Marcel finds completely gross. Connie’s love of bugs and animals parallels Rossellini’s real-life devotion to wildlife conservation. If you have not watched Rossellini’s series of short animal-inspired art videos, entitled Green Porno, I highly recommend them. A big thank you to Erin, my friend who also makes awesome video art, for introducing me to Green Porno after the movie (and for taking me to watch Marcel in the first place).
Aside from being a delightful continuation of a lot of the themes from Jenny Slate’s earlier films, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is also kind of like An American Tail by way of This is Spinal Tap. Marcel shares a spiritual connection to Fievel the mouse, as a small child in a scary, oversized world who just wants to be reunited with his family, and Marcel’s friendship with Dean parallels the relationship between Nigel (Christopher Guest) and Martin (Rob Reiner) in Spinal Tap; the eccentric subject of the film excitedly explaining to the “regular guy” documentarist about the whimsical way he lives.
Another movie that I think about often and that my brain connects to both Marcel the Shell and Stage Fright is the Sarah Polley documentary, Stories We Tell (2012). In the movie, Sarah also uses the documentary format to return to the environment she grew up in, interviewing her own family members about their shared family history, ultimately making a movie about how we are shaped by the love and attention of the people we grew up with. Like Jenny’s description in her special, it’s like they just showed up to Sarah’s house one day and made a movie about her (except it was Sarah all along because she is an incredibly multi-talented artist).
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On succeeds at what it sets out to accomplish; to charm the audience first and foremost, and to tell a touching story about family and family quirks, about the pains of growing up, about longing and belonging, with just a tiny 1-inch seashell for a protagonist. It’s a movie about enjoying the little moments that I would have watched a million times if I had it on VHS as a kid, and it will definitely become one of my go-to’s for when I want to watch something soothing and heart-warming on a sunday afternoon.