Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 20, 2022

In the relatively recent annals of show business history, you'd probably be hard pressed to find an entertainment company which virtually defines "quirky" as consistently as A24 seems to be able to. Since its founding in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges, this "little" independent that could has had at least some outsized zeitgeist defining productions on its slate, including such widely variant offerings as A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring, Enemy, Under the Skin, Obvious Child, Life After Beth, Tusk, Ex Machina, Room, The Witch, Remember, Green Room, The Lobster, Swiss Army Man, Into the Forest, The Sea of Trees, American Honey, Moonlight, The Monster, A Ghost Story, Woodshock, The Florida Project, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist, First Reformed, Hereditary, Under the Silver Lake, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Midsommar, The Lighthouse, Uncut Gems, First Cow, Saint Maud, Zola, The Green Knight, Lamb, X, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Men and Bodies Bodies Bodies. Now as even my reviews of some of these film should indicate, I frankly don't consider all of these to be unheralded masterpieces, and in fact there's a clinker or two in the above list (in my estimation, anyway), but for sheer audacity and gobmsacking variety of concepts, the list (which is far from a complete listing of A24 produced and/or distributed material) should hopefully suffice to help support my thesis. In that regard, one might imagine Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate (who not so coincidentally starred in the above mentioned Obvious Child) figuratively telling A24 "hold our beers" while they produced the utterly charming and completely gonzo feature Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, a film whose very title may at least hint at its more outré sensibilities.

As is discussed in a making of featurette included on this disc as a supplement, the genesis of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On was almost happenstance, when Slate and Fleischer Camp were forced to share a very small hotel room with a bunch of other people, and Slate reacted by beginning to speak in a "tiny" voice, in order to indicate just how cramped the quarters were. From that perhaps inauspicious start, Marcel began to take on a life of his own, especially after Camp basically scotch taped and superglued a few random items together to create the bizarre yet somehow instantly lovable creature. A series of shorts featuring Marcel were uploaded to YouTube, where they of course went viral, and this long gestating feature film was the result.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On takes a mockumentary approach to its subject, with Fleischer Camp "appearing" (at least in the corners of the frame) as the appropriately named Dean, a guy who has moved into an apartment after a break up and who discovers little Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate) and his aging grandmother Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini, kind of incredibly). Dean is a documentarian and begins to, well, document Marcel's "adventures", as well as the more personal story of Marcel and Connie trying to find the rest of their family, who were taken in the chaos of another break up involving the former inhabitants of the home. Some of the supplements get into the subtext (which is actually text) of the story, which is about "finding community", but I'd further pinpoint that aspect by saying it's about characters who are distinctly "odd" or "not normal" (so to speak, at least from the perspective of ostensibly "normal" people) trying to find community, which can almost unavoidably be more of a challenge.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is something of a technical marvel, as is also detailed in some of the supplements, but it's really its emotional pull that gives the film its real power. Anyone who has ever struggled to find either family or just compatriots will find this film unusually visceral, and it very smartly waves its "freak flag" proudly, continuing A24's commendable tradition of offering audiences something other than cookie cutter entertainments.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080 disc released separately by A24.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of A24 with a 2160p transfer in 1.56:1. The IMDb only offers a 4K DI technical datapoint, but your intrepid reviewer found this interview with co-directors of photography Bianca Cline and Eric Adkins which offers quite a bit of interesting information, with a brief mention of "older" Alexa cameras and, kind of incredibly given the technical finesse of this presentation, GoPro cameras. This is a fascinating production from any number of angles, and the making of featurette at least briefly addresses the unbelievable precision which was necessary to combine stop action with peripatetic camera moves (and ostensibly "on the fly" focus pulling), but the result is so seamless and so consistently impressive in terms of detail levels that the effort behind it all is invisible, which is a good thing. Fine detail on everything from the striations on Marcel and Connie to more "real" items like the fuzzy green tennis ball Marcel roams around the premises in, or even Lesley Stahl's pinkish dress are typically excellent. The palette is not especially mind blowing, but the 4K UHD version offers some interesting if subtle highlights in some of the "natural world" moments in particular courtesy of HDR and/or Dolby Vision. There was also a slightly more peach colored tone to some of the interior house scenes in my estimation in this version. The entire presentation has a nicely textured organic appearance which I'm assuming was accomplished via digital means, but which, like all the technical mastery needed to pull of this production, never really draws undue attention to itself.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On features a nicely expressive Dolby Atmos track which admittedly may not offer a surplus of vertical activity but which still delivers some rather impressive surround activity, at least considering the fact that the film deals with miniscule shells often in the confines of a home environment. The score has some very low end heavy moments which thump and throb through the subwoofer, but a lot of the engagement of side and rear channels comes courtesy of subtle but still often very inventive sound effects and ambient environmental effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Filmmaker Commentary features Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate and Nick Paley.


• Original Shorts

  Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, One (2010) (HD; 3:23)

  
  

  Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Two (2011) (HD; 4:13)

  
  

  Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Three (2022) (HD; 3:53)

• Behind the Scenes with Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (HD; 17:54) is a fun piece offering some nice interviews with Fleischer Camp, Slate and Paley.

Additionally this A24 Shop exclusive is another nicely packaged effort from the label, with the DigiPack holding a really nicely done perfect bound booklet that offers a ton of whimsical art, along with some writing, photos and cast and crew information. Everything is housed in a slipbox.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've actually written about the trauma of having "undiscovered family" out there in the big, wide world in my Oranges and Sunshine Blu-ray review from several years ago, and so the central plot point of Marcel and Connie yearning to find their relatives struck a decidedly powerful chord with me. The fact that a film about two shells can elicit such overwhelming emotion is testament to the filmmaking finesse of Fleischer Camp, Slate and Paley, along with a really fun set of supporting players who show up either as voice actors or on screen performers. A24 continues to set the bar pretty high for "quirkiness", and there's probably no better example than Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, at least until the next A24 production hits theaters and/or Blu-ray. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very engaging. Highly recommended.