Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is an unexpectedly lovely movie.  This movie drips with charm.  I had a great time watching this movie.

The movie is basically a mockumentary following Marcel (the shell with shoes on) and how he goes about his everyday life. As the movie goes on we learn more about him and his family and we join him in his quest for his family.  It blends stop motion animation into live action, not unlike Ray Harryhausen did.  

I felt throughout this movie the innocence of Marcel (why does this sentence sound like it's got a German grammar structure?). He has a childish innocence which brings some beautifully inspired wisdom. He says that someone once said his head was too big for his body, and his response… ‘Compared to what?’  I love it.  Now Marcel, being a shell (with shoes on), has a different outlook on life.  He interacts with the documentary’s director and learns more about the world around him.  As the director uploads videos to YouTube Marcel becomes a viral sensation and here we get the movie’s commentary on social media.  It's done so well.  He asks for help to find his family and, whilst he has 30 million hits, he doesn't find any real community to help.

The movie is funny.  Marcel’s innocence makes some of the silly things so funny.  He says a worm looks like he has no pants on or when he quotes Wayne Gretzky and keeps calling him the wrong name, like Wade Jet ski.  Brilliant.

But… And this is big but.  

I felt really sad for him at times.  Yep that's right, i felt sad for a stop motion shell (with shoes on).  The wonders of cinema.  See, I see Marcel as a lonely person with only his grandmother to exist with.  And he was to ‘stay alive and not just survive but have a good life’, it really hits.  I see a young shell (with shoes on) who has a life ahead of him but the opportunities are limited because he’ll always be lonely.  And it doesn’t be any better when (spoilers) his grandmother dies.  In what could be the saddest stop motion scene ever committed to screen, he buries her and I am in pieces.  It comes after he returns from a trip out of the house to look for the family who used to live in those, and he returns to find his grandmother has fallen and hurt herself.  An all too real event in many people’s lives.  

The good news is  there is a happy ending, like only celluloid can deliver.  Marcel finds his family and they have this beautiful montage of the family visiting the grandmother’s grave with Marcel singing The Eagles.  It is wonderful.

For a movie that is barely 90 minutes it manages to make me laugh, cry and feel real things.  That's something I will always love about movies.  Sound and light on a screen can give great emotions.  The movie is somewhat bittersweet.  It reminds me of the video game Unravelled; quaint, easy going and heartfelt.