Marcel the Shell With Shoes On Review: Beauty in Simplicity

Marcel’s delightful, but partially successful, transition to the big screen demonstrates the significance of universal truths.

One would not expect to relate to, and be so impacted by, a small stop motion shell with shoes, which is perhaps Marcel the Shell With Shoes On greatest success. Entering Marcel’s world one is immediately confronted with unabashed cuteness and empathetic naivety. Marcel, the titular shell, lives with his grandmother Connie after the owner’s of the now airbnb their community dwelled in mistakenly took the tribe during a particularly cruel argument. This backdrop of a bickering couple implies themes that are developed throughout the film. Simple, universal truths regarding community and emotional connection that thrive when being spouted with Marcel’s adorable voice. In terms of plot, Marcel’s journey to rejoin his community is about the extent of it. While an uneventful narrative does not inherently make a film lesser, Marcel at times seems directionless. However, this narrative weakness also aids the film in providing ample room for the star of the show. 

Debuting in a 2013 Youtube short, Marcel instantly charms with its presentation and title character. Captured through the lens of Dean, a recently divorced amateur filmmaker looking for a place to stay, Marcel takes a documentarian visual approach to a tangentially fictional world. With this grounded aesthetic, the film makes plenty of use of both visual comedy and the home itself to create a world that feels truly alive, one filled with prodigious trinkets from Marcel’s perspective and shortcuts for the little shells to experience life. Outside of crafting a well realized world, the film’s visuals at times border on ambient, adding to the whimsical atmosphere Marcel exudes. That being said, there is always room for even more tiny libraries made out of books or holes in the wall acting as food reserves. From this desire is where the visual discrepancy becomes apparent: how does Dean manage to fit his canonically large camera into these hidey holes? How does he move from one spot to another to achieve various angles at a moment's notice? While the film undoubtedly chose a creative, and most would argue fitting, documentary style, at the same time Marcel indulges in shots ripped out of a fictional film. Compositions seem impossible when given more than a second's thought, and that dissonance can be jarring in a film that works hard to sell the viewer on its premise and displays detailed elements of filmmaking from Dean’s perspective.

Similarly, the film’s pacing could easily take the average viewer out of the experience. With the documentarian style comes out of place and drastic focus pulls, perhaps dialing that “whimsical” effect past comfortability. When this visual effect is coupled with consistent hard cuts to screen recordings of hectic social media pages, the film’s visuals become a cluster of effects and edits that will inevitably create a barrier between viewer and film. This visual style that encompasses the first third comes as a result of narrative necessity. After learning of the sentient shell, Dean posts a short clip to Youtube which becomes an overnight success. The impounding attention can only be portrayed through screen recordings and the like, and to squeeze in the film’s themes and narrative beats, there was no choice but to work through this as quickly as possible. This decision leaves the film with an imbalanced structure, only heightened by character’s that could have been given stronger, intertwining arcs to more effectively sell the themes. However, beneath the at times distracting aesthetic and narrative flaws is a delightful examination on the simple truths of life, one made immersive not by pacing or visuals, but by emotional engagement with the title character.

Opening with a voice over was a clever move to sell the audience immediately on Marcel and his child-like personality. Yet, Marcel is never the protagonist of a children’s film, spouting potty humor or annoying the audience with his naivety is never present. For this viewer, the comedy worked and Marcel was an easy sell as the film’s focus, if not for the humor, then for the beautiful simplicity in which his mind works. When viewing an innocent comment on his youtube video signing off with “peace and love,” Marcel is confused, wondering why anyone would need to proclaim peace as there is simply no other option. The film is packed with delightful moments such as this, emotionally impactful and telling interactions between characters, the shells and reality, and to a sadly much lesser extent, Dean and the emotional void he hides behind the camera. The thematic touchstones of community, relationships and emotional vulnerability are applicable to anyone watching, and with the dialogue and characters being so delightfully innocent, what could have been reductive statements of “be kind” transform into emotionally charged universal truths. 

In other words, Marcel thrives on its simplicity. From its thematic proclamations to plot beats, Marcel is not the most complicated film, but because the simplicity is executed with such grace, it manages to touch the hearts of all that choose to watch. While the plainness is as much a negative as it is a positive in other elements, such as character development being less effective than it could have been, ultimately it is this innocence that sells the film. If Marcel dared to be more, perhaps we would have been presented with a more narratively whole and complex film, but one must also wonder, at what cost? The charm of Marcel is his smallness, his unique position and simple understanding of the world and its conflicts. Nothing is more endearing than a tiny and wholly good hero trying his best to care for others, even at the behest of himself. Marcel captures this spirit of goodness, adventure and childlike whimsy and lays it atop themes that are more relevant today than ever before. As Lesley Stahl says, Marcel “adds new meanings to its simplest ideas” and that is in fact the greatest strength of Marcel the shell...with shoes on.