Jun 22, 2022

'Marcel The Shell With Shoes On' REVIEW ROUNDUP: Seamless Stop-Motion and Heart

Indie film darling "Marcel to the Shell with Shoes On" will open in theaters on June 24.

Distributed by A24, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is an adaptation of Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate's decade-old viral short film series. The film is a bit like a documentary, featuring a miniature shellfish who lives with her grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) and a scraggly pet named Alan. Marcel begins when the documentary filmmaker books the Airbnb where Marcel and his grandmother live and begins documenting the young protagonist's coming-of-age journey of self-discovery.

It is one thing to animate a digital short for Youtube, and quite another to produce something that will work on the big screen for 90 minutes. That's why the producers of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On have enlisted special effects pioneer Steven Chiodo ("Killer Klowns from Outer Space," "Team America: World Police," "Pee-wee's Big Adventure") Steven Chiodo has been hired as the film's general animation director. Thiodo Brothers Productions is an animation production company, with Edward Thiodo as animation producer and Kirsten Lepore as animation director.

For this comprehensive review, we decided to stick to a review highlighting the work of the film's stop-motion team. As of the time this article was posted, "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" boasts a 100% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Critics' comments include:

Courtney Howard of the AV Club gave special kudos to stop-motion DP Eric Adkins. The cinematography by live action DP Bianca Klein and stop-motion animation DP Eric Adkins is exuding poetry. The Academy's aspect ratio (1.33:1) and documentary-style cinematography amplify the exchange of intimacy and immediacy between subject and camera. The animators took cues from Slate and Rossellini's perfect voice inflections to give Marcel and Connie great expressive power.

Carla Renata of RogerEbert.com was fascinated by how well the film's stop-motion scenes integrated with those shot in live action: [Marcel the Shell with Shoes On The transparent precision of the animation blends seamlessly with the live-action material and is mesmerizing to watch. My favorite, however, is 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl's infiltration of the pivotal interview that reunites Marcel with his community, and the jubilation that surrounds Connie and Marcel in the process. It really speaks to the childlike hearts of cynical adults.

Screen Daily's Tim Grierson is equally impressed:

The stop-motion is impressive in the aloof way it deftly blends Marcel into the live-action environment, and Slate's precise voice work continues to shine. Marcel may be childlike and magnanimous, but he is also brooding and cynical, exuding an air of melancholy, yet reveling in the mundane. (Marcel is a very clever creation, and it is a pleasure to be back in his company.

Indiewire's Kate Urbrand praised the film's "inventive stop-motion" and sensitive portrayal of grief:

In a time surrounded by questions of connection, community, and change, "Marcel the Shell" is a big idea seamlessly blended with charm and humor (and some inventive stop-motion work). In short, it is the cutest film about family grief this year, and perhaps ever.

In a review in The Hollywood Reporter, Rovia Gyalky states that the efforts of the film's animation crew are completely justified by the final product:

After meeting Marcel, his entire life is an improvised construction It is impossible not to see the world from a different angle, from Combining stop-motion animation with live-action footage is a painstaking process, but Fleischer-Kamp has successfully integrated Marcel's miniature world into ours.

"Marcel in a Shoeless Shell" was produced by Cinereach, You Want I Should, and Tulip. Elizabeth Holm, Andrew Goldman, Caroline Kaplan, Paul Mezey, Dean Fleischer-Kamp, Jenny Slate, and Terry Leonard as producers; Philip Engelhorn, William Byerly, Nion McEvoy, George Rush, and Michael Reisler serve as executive producers.