In 2021, a feature film was released to the festival circuit, directed by Fleisher Camp, written by Fleischer Camp, Slate, Nick Paley, and Elisabeth Holm, and featuring Slate and Fleisher Camp reprising their roles from the shorts, joined by Isabella Rossellini as Connie, Marcel's grandmother. In it, Marcel attempts to find his family. A24 picked up the distribution rights and gave it a wide release on June 24, 2022. The first trailer can be found here
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Guess what Marcel the Shell with Shoes On contains examples of.
- Actually Pretty Funny: The documentarian's reactions to Marcel's antics are usually subdued, but occasionally they'll crack a laugh.
- Ambiguous Situation: What exactly Marcel is is left unclear in the shorts. He makes allusions to friends and relatives, but they never appear. Similarly, to what end the documentarian is filming Marcel is never mentioned. The feature film seems set to clear some of this up, as Marcel's grandmother shows up in the trailer, as do dozens of other tiny beings who bare wildly varying degrees of resemblance to Marcel.
- Balloonacy: The second short contains the story of Marcel's sister Marissa, who became the namesake for what Marcel tells us is an epidemic of kids being carried away by balloons, never to return. Assuming Marissa was Marcel's size, this isn't necessarily implausible.
- Bamboo Technology:
- Much of the first short concerns Marcel's delight in informing the documentarian of the various tiny things he's turned into replicas of human technology, such as a beanbag made of a raisin, or an ice skate made of a human toenail.
- The impracticality of this gets a lampshade in the second short, specifically the Flintstones-esque creature-as-tool variant: bugs make very inconvenient cars unless you're fine going wherever the bug wants.
- Black Comedy Burst: With twenty seconds left in the first short, Marcel abruptly drops an anecdote about the time his brother killed someone with a brush.
- Character Catchphrase: Marcel will almost always begin a bit by asking the documentarian to "guess what" something, to which the documentarian will inevitably reply with a dry "what."
- Companion Cube: Marcel mentions in the first short that his one regret is not being able to have a dog. To fill the void, he's adopted Alan, a piece of lint on a string.
- Crossdressing Voices: Jenny Slate as Marcel.
- Funny Background Event: Marcel tells the story of his departed sister Marissa while standing on a laptop keyboard, causing a string of Zs to appear in a word processor window behind him.
- The Illegible: The end credits for the shorts are written in intensely scratchy cursive, and each line almost overlaps the previous until the screen is full.
- Limited Animation: Marcel's only articulated features are his mouth and his single eyeball, which gives his walk cycle a jerky, South Park feel as he bobs to and fro. The feature film finally gives him the ability to move his feet—though it still looks odd, given his lack of legs. It also gives him an eyelid.
- Literal Metaphor: Marcel asks in the first short if the documentarian wants to see him talk on the phone.
- Locked in a Room: Marcel mentions enjoying this trope in the third short.
- Minimalist Cast: The shorts feature just Marcel, the documentarian, a dog, and—in the third short—the hand of an additional unidentified person who shares Marcel's house. The feature film expands the cast significantly.
- Mockumentary: The premise and style of the shorts.
- Mundane Made Awesome: In the third short, Marcel was planning a big reveal of a grape to the documentarian, and subsequently wants to show off the documentarian to his (presumably tiny) friends, who don't believe anyone could eat a whole grape.
- Orphaned Set Up: In the third short, Marcel sneezes and falls over before he can finish his anecdote about a friend who got stuck in a spiderweb, then never circles back to it.
- Self-Applied Nickname: Marcel discusses the impossibility of making this stick in the second short, but if he could he would be called Ace. And if he had a Pen Name it would be Sheldon Conch.
