In Marcel the Shell With Shoes On Finding Community Requires Bravery

Dean-Fleischer Camp’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is an inspired, refreshing response to the nihilist zeitgeist at the core of so many contemporary movies. Marcel (Jenny Slate) symbolizes a love for the idiosyncrasies of life; whether its psychic love experts, tattoo shops, fountains in lakes, or cranberries, all life is uniquely beautiful and terrifying. But Marcel is in isolation, emotionally distraught after the disappearance of his family, hoping to be brave and find community once again. Marcel's resilient journey begins as his one-inch-tall frame takes on the colossal challenge of facing repressed trauma, battling the adversity of loss, and ending an unhealthy melancholic cycle in order to find his lost family. All Marcel has on this journey is his lovable but lonely documentarian Dean (Fleischer-Camp), a trusty resource but also formidable foe in the internet, and his original, most warmhearted supporter Nana Connie (Isabella Rossellini).