Marcel the Shell with Shoes On 2024 Movie Review Trailer

 It must be said that three and a half minutes was just the right length for a video for "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On", and all it took for Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate to launch one of the most unlikely viral phenomena on the Internet in the past. 2010. 

Additional illustrated books and shorts soon followed, allowing the duo to capitalize on some of that success. But they didn't "sell out" (unlike, say, the Looney Tunes when they made "Space Jam"), preserving the original charm of their creation every step of the way, which is why their new 90-minute film, a comedy A mockumentary about Marcel that treats the character and his concerns with complete sincerity and never wears out its welcome.

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Writers: Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate, Nick Paley

Stars: Jenny Slate, Dean Fleischer CampIsabella, Rossellini

A small animated seashell with a googly eye and a pair of pink plastic doll shoes, serving as a vessel for actor, comedian and “Saturday Night Live” veteran Slate's shaky, cute-boy impression. Not to be confused with a snail, Marcel is a voice Slate makes, one that sounds like the kid at the grown-up table, hungry for attention and hesitantly trying to interject non sequiturs into a more serious conversation (e.g., “ Guess what? “My skis are a man's toenails.” Except here, Marcel gets the spotlight and a slight animation upgrade, thanks to his unlikely partner, the Chiodo brothers, responsible for "Killer Klowns From Outer Space," Large Marge's stop-motion sequence in "Pee "Wee's." Big Adventure” and the “Team America: World Police” puppets.

The film's edgy conceit imagines that director Fleischer-Camp (here Dean, and Slate's real-life partner) has landed at an Airbnb somewhere in Los Angeles, and there he discovers Marcel and his grandmother Nana Connie (a slightly larger shell voiced by Isabella Rossellini) and proceeds to film them. That's all the explanation we get. Trying to untangle any of the larger ontological questions about Marcel's existence would only hinder the joke, which instead focuses on how small and self-sufficient this curious little creature can be.

Marcel and Connie were once part of a much larger community of random objects, like old peanuts, pretzels, and assorted Chex Mix ingredients, that might have fallen between the folds of the couch and taken on a life of their own. Marcel misses the others, especially the members of his immediate ghost family, who disappeared when the couple who owned the house (played by Thomas Mann and Rosa Salazar) broke up. Things were pretty tense when these two humans were together, but now that they're gone, Marcel is in control of the place, driving around in his "car" (a hollow tennis ball) and having fun with strange games (like trying to throw an orange to a target by jumping over the opposite end of a spoon).

Some viewers won't have patience with Marcel and his musings, though many will enjoy how inventive Fleischer-Camp and Slate have been in imagining a house from the perspective of its smallest inhabitant (not counting the felt spiders that sometimes they make cameos, or the piece of fluff that Marcel treats as a pet). When he wants to reach a high shelf, Marcel drags his little shoes through the honey and climbs the walls, leaving sticky footprints for the housekeeper to clean. When he's feeling musical, he can blow on a piece of dry pasta.

As Connie, Rossellini is a welcome addition to Marcel's world; The playful actor's contributions are a natural extension of her extravagant “Green Porno” shorts, in which she dresses up in giant insect costumes and teaches us about the mating habits of insects. To some extent, Marcel and Connie's behavior suggests the private worlds of animals abandoned by their owners during the workday or presumably inanimate objects, as presented in the hit cartoons "The Secret Life of Pets" and "Toy Story," although his behavior is more recognisably human. (Most of the dialogue was improvised and then animated, suggesting an approach more like Aardman's Oscar-winning “Creature Comforts.”)

It turns out that the shells are big fans of “60 Minutes” (it's their favorite show) and can hardly believe it when Lesley Stahl contacts Dean to set up an interview. Marcel hesitantly agrees, worried that so much commotion might be bad for Connie (who may not be far from seashell heaven), and this already self-aware mockumentary takes on an even more meta dimension. And then, around the 60-minute mark, something happens that gives the hitherto fairly light proceedings an unexpected emotional resonance.

Watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On 2024 Movie Trailer