If you go to see Marcel the Shell with Shoes on like we do every Blockbuster expecting to be entertained with fast-paced action and mesmerizing energy, you’ll be disappointed. It’s not that kind of film. But maybe just buzz into the movie almost late from the busyness of everyday life, flop into the familiar comfort of a movie theatre chair and open your heart up wide. Open your soul. And just sit for the short hour and a half with nothing else on your mind.
Maybe you’ll start thinking about the day to day things we take for granted. The magic of lint, or bugs buzzing in our gardens or how the light in our homes hits some spots just right. How play and community bring us so much joy. And what would we do if suddenly we lost almost everyone we love? What if suddenly we were alone?
This movie tells the story of Marcel, a little shell with one eye and pink shoes and his grandma Nana Connie, and you might have even met him before if you were watching YouTube in 2010. Marcel is a whimsical, curious character invented by Jenny Slate (who voices Marcel) and Dean Fleischer-Camp (who appears as the interviewer in this mock documentary). The film blends stop-motion and live-action filming and was a slow and detailed process taking nearly 7 years and yet it feels so effortlessly real. And just like Marcel muses “there must be so many other like me…it’s impossible that there wouldn’t be and not just my family ” by the end of the film we can almost imagine earnest little beings like Marcel living in all of our homes.
I had so many questions as I previewed Marcel the Shell last week and thankfully (Oh my goodness, totally thankfully!) I was able to ask Jenny Slate a few of them. I have clips from my interview with Jenny Slate about Marcel the Shell on my instagram. I love hearing the backstory about the things we enjoy, consume and build our lives upon and it was such an honor to hear such detailed, thoughtful answers from this brilliant comedian, writer and actress.
I have now watched the movie multiple times and I know it’s one I’ll come back to again and again-especially when things don’t feel right in the world, as we have felt so many days in the past few years, as we do today processing news we are hearing in the United States. This is a comforting and hopeful film that embraces the audience as a community, as active participants in life and gives us a small voice with a large echo that shows us we can be known, loved, accepted and valued for who we are at our core.
(PS This movie is rated PG)
(PPS. This is one of a few movies I probably would never have seen if it weren’t for an invitation in my email because of blogging. Recently I interviewed Robinne Lee about her book Idea of You and astronaut Jose Hernandez because of his life story that inspired A Million Miles Away. The coolest experience ever though was when my family was flown to Los Angeles to walk the blue carpet for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie just months before the whole world shut down.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)