Marcel the Shell with Shoes On Parent Guide

Upon the collapse of his marriage, Dean (Dean Fleischer-Camp) moves into an Airbnb only to find that it’s already occupied. Marcel the Shell (Jenny Slate) and his grandmother, Nanna Connie (Isabella Rossellini) have been living there for years, along with Marcel’s pet lint, Alan. Although life isn’t easy when you’re a one-inch-tall shell with feet, Marcel and Nanna have found ways to make it work. There used to be almost two dozen other shells living in the house, but most of them have been missing for the last two years, after a fight between former human tenants saw the shells shoved into a suitcase and carried off. When Dean starts posting videos of Marcel on the internet, Marcel becomes a minor celebrity, and hopes to use that fame to track down his missing family. Instead, his house just becomes a photo-op for internet wannabes. But without some big help, Marcel is never going to be able to restore his community!

This is a very cute little movie. It’s not very tightly structured, and most of the film consists of Marcel finding ways to make things work while dropping very emotionally sincere lines about what he sees as the broader truths of life. He’s a precocious little guy, and there’s a lot he doesn’t know about the wider world, but he’s got an enthusiastic optimism that translates surprisingly well onto a stop-motion animated shell with one eye.

Parents really don’t have much to worry about as far as content goes, but I’m not sure if older kids are going to have the patience for this quirky little character study – at least, I don’t think I would have at that age. Young kids probably won’t follow the story; they’ll just have fun watching the little fella roll around the house in a tennis ball and try to garden beets easily five times his size.

While Marcel the Shell with Shoes On isn’t gunning for any major awards, it’s a welcome breath of slow, heartwarming, and completely innocuous fun in a market frequently crowded with dark, violent, and profane options. Of course, if those are more your speed, this might come off as cloying or saccharine – which I suppose it is, at points – but it does so with so much open sincerity that it’s hard to stay upset with the film. It’s like being mad at a puppy for being overexuberant. At least this one won’t pee on your carpets.