Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

1hr 30mins (PG)

Man meets mollusc in a touching animation ★★★★

Part live action, part stop-motion animation, this quirky movie may sound altogether too twee, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. But stick with it, and you’ll be beguiled, because there is “a real sweetness and gentleness” to this story of a man-mollusc friendship. The film starts with a documentary filmmaker called Dean – played by director Dean Fleischer Camp – moving into an Airbnb rental following the collapse of his marriage. There, among the detritus, he finds Marcel, a one-inch-tall talking shell (voiced by Jenny Slate) with a single eye and tiny shoes, who has been left to care for his Philip Larkin-loving grandmother (Isabella Rossellini) following the disappearance of the rest of their family. Man and shell forge a bond and – aided by a film that goes viral on social media – set about finding Marcel’s missing relations. All this may sound intensely irritating, but the film is actually funny and heart-warming – and the odd-couple rapport so effective that “it takes an effort of will to remember that Marcel doesn’t exist”.

This “gorgeously constructed” movie is a thrilling testament to the power of animation, said John Nugent in Empire. Yes, it is whimsical, but it is far from shallow, with themes including grief, isolation and the need for family. And for a shell, Marcel is imbued with astonishing pathos. Indeed, you could regard it as a minor miracle of the filmmaker’s art: “If a tiny talking invertebrate exoskeleton can make you cry, is there anything cinema can’t do?” The film is indeed “profound and poetic”, said Phil de Semlyen in Time Out. But it is also visually inventive, and very witty. An hourand-a-half in Marcel’s company leaves you “little short of transformed”.