Jenny Slate brings us back to 2010s tiniest viral star in 'Marcel the Shell with Shoes On'
Small in stature but big in personality and wisdom, Jenny Slate voicing the tiny animated shell Marcel in Dean Fleischer-Camp’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On will make you laugh, as much as it makes part of your heart break.
Back in 2010, just five years into the life of a little online video platform called YouTube, Marcel became a viral sensation when Fleischer-Camp would post short videos of the animated character.
Now 12 years later, the filmmaker has given us an expansion of those videos with the feature film, still centred around Marcel speaking to a mysterious documentarian who wants to capture the life of this little shell.
It’s actually quite a sad set of circumstances that occurred when we meet the little shell in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Marcel is living in a house that became an AirBnb after the owners of the home split up.
After a set of unknown circumstances, Marcel is no longer with any family and friends, living in this house with just his grandmother Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini). The documentarian himself is also having a bit of a rough time, staying at this Airbnb after separating from his wife.
“It takes at least 20 shells to have a community,” Marcel says at the beginning of the film. “That’s about minimum that you need to survive, so I think at first I was thinking, ‘we’re not going to make it.’”
“But sometimes you just have to disregard those rules and think, well actually the rule is that I want to be having a good life and stay alive.”
Slate’s Marcel is silly, opinionated and vibrant, with quick quips like, after explaining that he’s a shell with a face and shoes on Marcel says, “I like that about myself" and "I have a lot of other great qualities as well,” and he explains that there is a “bread room,” which is a bedroom, but Marcel sleeps on a piece of bread.
Much like the original Marcel the Shell videos, in the film, when the documentarian starts posting videos of Marcel on YouTube, Marcel becomes an online sensation, getting more than 22 million views on a video.
But Marcel’s main priority is to take care of Connie, who is losing her memory as she gets older, and when the fandom gets to be too much, with Connie getting startled by fans wanting to take pictures and videos outside the house, Marcel wants to close things off to the outside world.
Fleischer-Camp, who co-wrote the screenplay with Elisabeth Holm and Nick Paley, really drives home this cautionary tale about fame, internet fame in particular.
“It’s an audience, it’s not a community,” Marcel says, as there continues to be a part of him that’s still longing for the community of shells he lost.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On dares you to laugh, cry, and honestly think about the real connections we make as we get older.
It would be simple to dismiss the movie as over-saturated, mushy, cutesy tale to make adults feel like kids again, but that grossly neglects all the nuance in the story.
Yes, Marcel is absolutely adorable and Slate’s voice very much sounds like the animated characters from our childhood, but it’s also a splendid vehicle to actually feel and think, and ultimately, just enjoy the big entertainment with the tiny protagonist.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is in theatre in Toronto and Vancouver on July 1, other cities on July 15.
