Marcel the Shell, creation of the Bostonian comic Jenny Slate, does not look a lot like other invertebrate exoskeletons. Blessed with one blinky eye in the space where you might expect a winkle or a cockle, he progresses about his – to him – unimaginably vast house in a pair of neat cartoony sneakers. Uncomplicated, but no fool, he has rigged up a connection between a cake mixer and a nearby tree that shakes nutritious fruit into his back garden. Like a character in The Borrowers redrawn by Joan Miró, he makes endlessly ingenious use of other human detritus. He travels about within a tennis ball. He has a piece of lint as a pet. (Why does lint play such a part in American comedy?)
Marcel is, however, not an entirely unfamiliar type. Like the current version of Paddington Bear, the shell is here to open up, through ingenuous, wide-eyed questioning, overlooked absurdities about the modern world. Not at home to irony, always expecting the best of people, he is, perhaps, as more sentimental Victorians allowed themselves to imagine children.
All of which sounds perfectly insufferable, but Slate’s improvised dialogue permits an altogether odder sensibility to edge forward. A character who initially seems blithe emerges as a neurotic with a creative take on the challenges of existence. “If I was someone else I would really be enjoying this,” he says on one particularly nice day.
He is a lot like the rest of us. He is a lot like Jenny Slate. Expanded from a series of shorts the comic developed with Dean Fleischer-Camp, the mockumentary has a film director take up an Airbnb in Southern California after breaking with his partner. He soon meets Marcel and learns that the poor fellow lost almost all his family when a previous resident emptied a drawer full of shells into his bag before storming out the door. The tiny creature has only his grandma – voiced poignantly by Isabella Rossellini – for company in the echoing house.
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There is a great deal about separation here. More than you might at first think. Camp is both the director of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and also the barely glimpsed human lead. When “Dean” explains to Marcel that he remains on good terms with his ex-wife, we are invited to consider that Dean Fleischer Camp was once married to Jenny Slate. You didn’t get that degree of narrative layering in Paddington.
[ Small, but perfectly formed — Oscar-nominated Marcel the ShellOpens in new window ]
Anyway, the film takes on the quality of a quest as Dean helps Marcel track down his family. That proves more than enough plot to sustain the expansion from YouTube diversion to feature entertainment. Fans of Killer Klowns from Outer Space will be delighted – and no doubt astonished – to hear that the Chiodo brothers, creators of that 1988 comedy horror classic, have been brought on to supervise animation. The visuals tend to an ambient grey that comfortably accommodates Slate’s gentle burbles and shy inhalations. No emotion is forced, but, as we move towards a touching denouement, even Teflon psyches will find themselves opening up to the oddest of outsiders.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On should appeal across all age groups. If you scrunch up your eyes and tilt your head you could imagine yourself watching an avant-garde animation at a Brooklyn art house. But there is also, about it, something of the charming work that Oliver Postgate did for British children’s television in the 1970s. Like Postgate’s Bagpuss and The Clangers, Marcel feels both of its time and one for the ages. It is way out there and easily accessible. Nominated for best animated feature at the upcoming Oscars, it deserves to win (though it almost certainly won’t).
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is on general release
