Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a 2021 American live-action/stop-motion animatedmockumentary film, co-written and directed by Dean Fleischer Camp in his feature directorial debut. It is based on and serves both as a direct stand-alone sequel and prequel to the series of Marcel the Shell shorts written by Jenny Slate and Fleischer Camp. Slate reprises her voice role as Marcel, an anthropomorphic seashell. Fleischer Camp, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann, Lesley Stahl, and Isabella Rossellini also star. The film follows Marcel, a shell who lives with his grandmother, Connie, after posting a short film online bringing Marcel millions of passionate fans and a new hope of reuniting with his long-lost family.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2021, and began a limited release in the United States by A24 on June 24, 2022, before its wide release on July 15. It was critically acclaimed and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Plot
Following the end of his marriage, documentary filmmaker Dean moves into an Airbnb and discovers Marcel, a one-inch-tall talking shell living in the home with his grandmother, Nana Connie, and Alan, his pet ball of lint.
Inspired by Marcel's whimsicality, resourcefulness, and fascination with the world, Dean begins filming Marcel's daily activities, most of which consist of gathering resources from the backyard in order to support himself and Nana Connie. Connie is wise but has some dementia. She tends to her garden assisted by insects she has befriended. Marcel and Connie share their mutual love of 60 Minutes and Lesley Stahl.
After Dean uploads his first video about Marcel to YouTube, it quickly becomes a cultural phenomenon. Marcel is both flattered and overwhelmed with his newfound popularity, lamenting that his family is not around to celebrate it with him. Marcel explains to Dean that there used to be an entire community of shells on the property, including Marcel's mother, father, brother, and aunt. The shells would take shelter in a sock drawer when the house's previous owners, Mark and Larissa, started knocking objects over while fighting. Following one fight, Mark accidentally packed the shells into his suitcase while moving out, leaving Marcel and Connie the only ones left on the property.
Dean helps Marcel produce a livestream on the Internet asking for help in locating his family. The livestream gains a substantial number of viewers, but after Marcel shares his location with viewers, the house becomes a popular area for influencers. Marcel becomes dismayed after realizing most of the people who saw his videos are fans desperate to be associated with him but largely uninterested in helping him.
The constant attention to the house quickly begins to bother Marcel, who is worried about Connie's deteriorating health. Marcel convinces Dean to drive him around the city in search of Mark's car but is overwhelmed to discover how large and vast the world outside his house really is. Realizing that the world is too big to likely discover the car on his own, a discouraged Marcel returns home to find Connie has fallen off the top of a washing machine and cracked her shell. Marcel tends to her wounds and grows more protective of Connie.
60 Minutes reaches out to Marcel in the hopes of doing a cover story. Despite Dean's encouragement, Marcel is reluctant to accept the offer, concerned with what the large production crew and more attention to the house would do to Connie's health. Marcel tells Dean he will not accept the interview until Connie is fully recovered. Dean confides this information to a fast-deteriorating Connie. Wanting Marcel to live a meaningful life of his own, Connie pretends to show signs of improvement around Marcel while encouraging him to accept the interview. Despite his strong reservations, Marcel eventually agrees to the interview, believing it may help him find his family.
Connie's health continues to worsen as the day of the interview approaches. Connie and Marcel watch as the 60 Minutes crew sets up in the living room and are starstruck upon seeing Lesley Stahl in person. Marcel and Dean both participate in the interview. Upon its completion, Marcel and Dean struggle to find Connie before realizing she died while their segment was being filmed. Marcel buries Connie in her garden and grieves her. Dean signs a lease for a new apartment.
60 Minutes calls Dean requesting additional filming after making new discoveries regarding the whereabouts of Larissa. The segment airs, showing that they were able to locate Larissa in Guatemala. Larissa then brings the 60 Minutes crew to Mark's house, where she and Mark get into an argument. Marcel urges Dean and the crew to check in Mark's sock drawer, where the entire shell community is discovered. They reunite in the Airbnb with Marcel, who is able to give Connie a proper funeral. Dean moves into his new apartment and begins dating again. Reunited with his family, Marcel confides to Dean that he often finds himself going to the laundry room window alone and feeling the wind blow through his shell. Marcel shows Dean the sound it produces, remarking on its beauty as he stares out the window.
A closing scene interspersed with the early credits shows Dean introducing Marcel to his new apartment.
Dean Fleischer Camp as Dean, a documentarian who is a semi-fictionalized version of Fleischer Camp himself, as revealed by blurry shots of a clapperboard showing his full name and of a computer screen showing a real-life photo of him and his ex-wife Slate
Isabella Rossellini as the voice of Nana Connie, Marcel's Italian grandmother, who calls him "Marcello"
Chiodo Bros. Production (known for the 1988 cult classic Killer Klowns from Outer Space) led animation, with Edward Chiodo as animation producer and Kirsten Lepore as animation director. Stephen Chiodo was the film's supervising animation director. Bianca Cline led live action cinematography, while Eric Adkins (Mars Attacks!, The PJs) led stop-motion cinematography.[4]
In November 2021, A24 acquired the distribution rights.[8] The film was released in select theaters in the United States on June 24, 2022,[9] before releasing nationwide on July 15.[10] The film was released on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD on September 5, 2022.
In the United States and Canada, the film made $169,606 from six theaters in its opening weekend.[11] It then made $262,022 from 22 theaters in its second[12] and $322,167 from 48 theaters in its third.[13] Playing in 153 theaters the following weekend, the film added another $567,918, bringing its four-week running total to $1.7 million.[14] The film expanded to 590 theatres in the second wide weekend, grossing $874,302 with the average revenue on $1,481, finishing eleventh at the box office.[15] It continued to gross $671,361 from 821 theaters in its third wide weekend and $345,484 from 498 theaters in its fourth wide weekend, both times finishing fourteenth at the box office.[16][17]
Critical response
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 193 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The critical consensus reads, "Poignant, profound, and utterly heartwarming, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is animated entertainment with real heart."[18]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100 based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[19]
Accolades
On July 20, 2022, Dean Fleischer Camp said that even with the film having animated characters living and interacting with a live-action world, it will be eligible for consideration to be nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 95th Academy Awards in 2023. He went on to say that in order for it to be considered, he and A24 will have to submit documentation to prove that it has met the requirements in which "animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's running time. In addition, a narrative animated film must have a significant number of characters animated."[20][21] On November 9, 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially deemed the film eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature category.[22] It was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film,[23] but lost to Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio which would also win the Oscar afterwards.[24][25]
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for the best animated film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.
Kerry Condon is an Irish actress. She was the youngest actress to play Ophelia in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet (2001–2002). She played Octavia of the Julii in Rome (2005–2007), Stacey Ehrmantraut in Better Call Saul (2015–2022), and was the voice of the artificial intelligence entity F.R.I.D.A.Y. in various films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
ShadowMachine is an American animation studio and production company specialized in film, television, commercials and music videos.
Jenny Slate is an American actress, stand-up comedian, and writer. Following early acting and stand-up roles on television, Slate gained recognition for her live variety shows in New York City and for co-creating, writing, and producing the children's short film and book series Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2010–present).
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a trilogy of American 4-minute stop-motion animated mockumentary short films about an anthropomorphic seashell. The short films were directed, edited and produced by Dean Fleischer Camp who co-wrote with Slate. Fleisher Camp and Slate released a 2021 feature film of the same name about the title character with Slate reprising the role.
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known collectively as the Daniels, are an American filmmaking duo. They began their career as directors of music videos, including ones for "Houdini" (2012) by Foster the People and "Turn Down for What" (2013) by DJ Snake and Lil Jon, both of which earned them nominations at the Grammy Awards.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is a 2022 American animated adventure comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures. The sequel to the spin-off film Puss in Boots (2011) and the sixth installment of the Shrek film series, the film was directed by Joel Crawford, co-directed by Januel Mercado, and written by Paul Fisher, Tommy Swerdlow, and Tom Wheeler. Based on the character introduced in Shrek 2 (2004) and inspired by the fairy tale of the same name, the voice cast includes Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek reprising their respective roles as the titular character and Kitty Softpaws, with new additions to the cast including Harvey Guillén, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, Samson Kayo, John Mulaney, and Wagner Moura. The story follows Puss in Boots, who teams up with Kitty Softpaws and Perrito to find the Last Wish of the fallen Wishing Star to restore eight of his nine lives. They race against other fairy tale characters seeking the same treasure, while a sinister wolf hunts Puss himself.
Fire of Love is a 2022 independent documentary film about the lives and careers of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Directed, written, and produced by Sara Dosa, the film had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2022, where it won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award. It was released on July 6, 2022, by National Geographic Documentary Films and Neon. It received acclaim from critics, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
Stephanie Ann Hsu is an American actress. She received critical acclaim for her dual role as Joy Wang and Jobu Tupaki in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
The 48th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), honored the best in film for 2022. Both Everything Everywhere All at Once and Tár received the award for Best Film, being the fourth time the association gave the award to two films in the same year. For the first time in three years, the association held an in-person awards event where all the winners were honored on January 14, 2023.
Dean Fleischer Camp is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter and film editor. He created the Marcel the Shell with Shoes On short films with Jenny Slate, whom he was married to from 2012 to 2016. He also directed and starred in the feature film of the same name, which he co-wrote with Slate and Nick Paley. For their work in the feature film, Fleischer Camp and Paley were nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing at the 38th Independent Spirit Awards. Fleischer Camp was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 95th Academy Awards. He also directed the 2016 documentary Fraud.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the score album composed by Disasterpeace to the 2021 film of the same name. The album was released on June 24, 2022 in digital formats by Lakeshore Records. It features 20 tracks from the original score, which plays in the film alongside several compositions from Hiroshi Yoshimura.
The 7th Seattle Film Critics Society Awards were announced on January 17, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
