{"id":9734,"date":"2023-01-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9734"},"modified":"2023-01-09T22:41:59","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T03:41:59","slug":"marcel-the-shell-with-shoes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/10\/marcel-the-shell-with-shoes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcel the Shell with Shoes On."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On<\/em> is the full-length feature based on the series of short films from 2010 that featured the title character, a one-inch tall shell with an eye in its aperture and, yes, shoes on, voiced by Jenny Slate. It utilizes stop-motion animation to bring the dimunitive, wide-eyed shell to life as it shows us around the world he has created in an AirBnB, where he lives with his grandmother (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) after most of their family vanished when a previous tenant moved out. It\u2019s charming, and slight, and for most of its 80-odd minutes it feels like a short that\u2019s been overstretched, but the whole thing is salvaged by a tremendous finale. (You can rent it on Amazon<\/a>, iTunes<\/a>, etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcel and his grandmother have jury-rigged a bunch of devices from household objects to help themselves adapt to their living space, most notably rolling around the apartment in a tennis ball, and to allow them more easily move between their indoor and outdoor environments. The gimmick in this film is that a guest at this AirBnB has decided to film his conversations with Marcel and post them online, where they find a cult following (as the real clips did), which leads to interest from the favorite show of Marcel and his grandmother, 60 Minutes<\/em>. Their favorite host, Lesley Stahl, ends up visiting the apartment to interview Marcel and explain his quest to try to find the rest of his family, which, of course, leads to the big finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s not a whole lot more to Marcel the Shell with Shoes On<\/em>; either you get on this film\u2019s wavelength, and you enjoy the dialogue between the interviewer and the shell, or you don\u2019t. The film is more witty and cute than laugh-out-loud funny, although the line about \u201ceverything comes out in the wash\u201d did get a big laugh from me. Some of Marcel\u2019s soliloquies veer awfully close to \u201cinspirational poster in a waiting room\u201d territory, and those were the ones where I found myself tuning out \u2013 that\u2019s great in a short film or sketch but wears very thin over an hour-plus. With only the three characters for the vast majority of the movie\u2019s running time, there\u2019s a sameness that sets in until Lesley Stahl shows up to save the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the point the filming of the show-within-the-movie starts, the movie\u2019s tempo picks up, and suddenly it\u2019s not entirely about Marcel\u2019s witticisms and observations. Cute has a half-life, and it turns out it\u2019s pretty short. When Marcel reunites with his family, the whole tone changes as well, and it\u2019s surprisingly emotional as well, while also showing off a higher level of animation quality. That final twenty minutes or so takes this movie from below the \u2018recommend\u2019 line to just above it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcel<\/em> earned one of the five nominations for Best Animated Feature Film at this year\u2019s Golden Globes, although I\u2019m going to guess it has no chance to beat both Turning Red<\/em> (which was mid) and Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Pinocchio<\/em> (which I haven\u2019t seen yet). I\u2019ve only seen one other potential Oscar contender, another stop-motion film, Wendell & Wild<\/em>, which was more entertaining throughout than this one but had a less inventive story. You can see Wendell & Wild<\/em>, which was co-written by Jordan Peele, on Netflix; it has some important themes about race, gentrification, and the weight of history, but I thought the main character\u2019s narrative was too familiar. Also, they kill the parents in the first scene, which I thought was trademarked by Disney. I’m hoping whatever wins the awards is still out there among films I haven’t seen yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the full-length feature based on the series of short films from 2010 that featured the title character, a one-inch tall shell with an eye in its aperture and, yes, shoes on, voiced by Jenny Slate. It utilizes stop-motion animation to bring the dimunitive, wide-eyed shell to life as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1290,37,215,648],"class_list":["post-9734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-movies","tag-animation","tag-movies","tag-potential-oscar-nominees","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9735,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9734\/revisions\/9735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}