BEFORE: Well, a lot's happened over the last few days - my life has become very busy and it's about to get even very busy-er. I worked the After-School Special event at the theater, which meant screenings of "Nimona", "Call Jane" and "Super Mario Bros." over last weekend, and then Thursday night, a special screening of "The Creator". And at the other job, my boss premiered his new animated feature, "Slide", at the Woodstock Festival Friday, with another screening set for today, Saturday.
When October hits - forget it, I'm booked up every day between the two jobs, and then NY Comic Con comes around Oct. 12-15, and now I'm going on vacation Oct. 18-23, and that's 10 days out of 31 where I'll be either super busy or in vacation mode. That leaves 21 days to watch 25 films, it might be impossible unless I give up on eating and sleeping. Maybe I can pull some doubles, or maybe I can still watch a couple movies while on vacation - or screw it, maybe the October chain is going to spill into November, that's not the end of the world, the romance chain spills into March all of the time, so what if the horror topic extends a couple days into November. Or I can just post date the reviews, nobody would ever know but me. I'll figure something out, maybe I'll just start early and try to stay two days ahead of the calendar. Either way, it's going to happen and it's going to be OK.
Andy Richter carries over from "80 for Brady". Also, here's the format breakdown for September, now that it's over, and I'll post the actor links for October tomorrow.
7 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Women Talking, The Lady in the Van, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Zola, Better Living Through Chemistry, 80 for Brady, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
8 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Empire of Light, Blinded by the Light, Breathe, Rosewater, The Last Days on Mars, Elvis, Assassination Nation, Don't Worry Darling
2 watched on Netflix: Uncharted, A Man Called Otto
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Alan Partridge
1 watched on Disney+: Pinocchio (2022)
2 watched in theaters: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Asteroid City
1 watched on a random site: The Trip to Greece
1 watched on a random site: The Trip to Greece
22 TOTAL
THE PLOT: A cash-strapped documentary maker decides to make his newest film about a mollusk shell he finds living in his AirBnB.
AFTER: I got very concerned watching this film, when I saw footage of Conan O'Brien and NOT his long-time sidekick, Andy Richter, who is my link between "80 for Brady" and the start of the horror chain tomorrow. If Andy Richter is NOT in this film, if I got bad intel or his listing on the IMDB is some kind of mistake, well, it's not the end of the world, I would just have to immediately stop watching this film and drop it from the chain, and thankfully the chain would just close up around the gap, Richter would then carry straight over from "80 for Brady" to the first horror film. This would have also made my life easier, this film would then be one of the two films I need to drop before close of business this year, to make the total number of films watched in 2023 be 300 instead of 302. But Richter IS in this film, he just provides the voice for an animated character, at least that's what the credits say. I should have looked more closely at them, then I wouldn't have stressed out during the movie. It's gonna be OK.
This film was tough for me to watch, though - but not for the same reason my boss had, which was because he absolutely hated the film. No, it took me two nights because the first night I watched halfway through, and something about it was so calming that I fell asleep. Woke up, hit rewind, back to where I left off, fell asleep again, woke up, hit rewind, back to that spot... You know what, forget it, I started this a day early because October's going to be so crammed, I was trying to get a jump on things and clearly I must be behind on my sleep or something if a movie about a tiny snail (or whatever) with a soothing voice can knock me out again and again.
OK, night 2, at least I could remember exactly where i left off on night 1, because the OnDemand feature of the DVR remembers all. I might be in trouble if anybody ever hacked my system and took a look at all the crazy messed-up movies I've seen, that's sure to put me on somebody's watchlist somewhere. ("Hey this guy watched three movies about Charles Manson, and FOUR movies with Hitler, all in a damn row! That's just what a psychopath would do...")
I don't think I missed out on anything by watching the film in two smaller pieces rather than getting it all in in one go..
Look, I didn't HATE this, but it's all just a little too cutesy and twee, isn't it? I know the female comedian who voices the character is really attached to it, but somehow it all just feels like pandering at the highest level, like "Hey, I can do this really soft and gravelly thing with my voice, and isn't that how a tiny snail-like character would sound if he were just so adorkable, beyond words in fact." In other words, it's a little much - they tried a bit too hard to make a character that you would automatically fall in love with, like a kid's stuffed animal or one of those Keane paintings with the big, sad eyes. You know on some level your emotions are being messed with, and then when the other mollusk character is introduced, Marcel's grandmother, well, now it just feels like one of those animal rescue PSAs because come on, you just know what's going to happen to the grandmother, right?
Marcel lives in a house that used to be occupied by a young couple, but now it's being rented out all the time as an AirBnB - hmm, what happened to the couple? Well, it turns out they fought a lot, which is a very telling plot point when you discover that the comedian who does the voice of Marcel was married to the man who plays the documentary filmmaker, and they're not married any more. So I wonder if a little bit of their personal life was bleeding over into the story here via the fighting couple. When the (fictional) couple fought, the shells who lived in their house would react by running to the sock drawer and huddling together for emotional support. Well, it seems that one fight ended so badly that the man packed up his clothes and moved out, accidentally taking all the shells gathered in the sock drawer with him - and that included Marcel's parents and the extended family as well.
With just his grandmother, Marcel continues exploring the usually-empty house, gathering fruits from the tree outside and drops of water from the sink to sustain them, and also skating on the dusty coffee table as if it's an ice rink. But he misses his parents (Aww....) and his grandmother is getting weaker by the day and not eating much (Aww...again) and he eventually enlists the help of the filmmaker staying in the house to drive around and try to search for the blue car that the man was driving when he stormed off with Marcel's family in his suitcase. But the motion of the car makes Marcel sick and he throws up on the dashboard (Aww....no wait, Ewww....).
But Marcel soon realizes that the world is a much bigger place than he originally thought - they can't even properly search the city where they live, and of course there are many other cities, so really, the man could have gone anywhere with Marcel's family in tow, and the chances of finding them again are slim - unless, of course, Dean makes some adorkable short films with Marcel being adorkable, and they go viral on the interwebs and a whole bunch of fans on YouTube join in the search for Marcel's parents. That could work, only the YouTubers turn out to be more obsessed with tracking down where, exactly, Marcel lives and then taking selfies outside his house to prove they were there. OK, new plan.
Enter Lesley Stahl from "60 Minutes", which is a show that even tiny mollusks seem to be aware of, Marcel and his Nan never missed an episode, it turns out - excuse me, I've got something in my eye again - and once the crack investigative CBS reporters are on the case, they're able to track down the woman who used to live in the house, who's been working for some non-profit charity in a third world country, and they convince her to come home and help track down her ex-boyfriend, so perhaps there is a chance that our tiny hero-in-a-halfshell can still find his parents and other family members after all.
Dean finally moves out of the AirBnB and into his own apartment, while Marcel enjoys performing once again for his family - and again I have to wonder if the fictitious Dean and Marcel reflect the new status of Dean and Jenny - Dean's living on his own and Jenny goes back to performing comedy, everybody's moving up and moving on and chances for a "Marcel" sequel are possibly slim to none. Maybe it's better that way, everything is temporary and nothing gold can stay, the seasons have to change and so do we. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, maybe Jenny and Dean split up years ago and then decided to get back together and collaborate on an animated movie, but really, if your ex calls you up and suggests making a movie together, your answer should probably be "No", if I'm being real.
On that note, we're flipping over the calendar page tomorrow to October and that can only mean one thing - well, it means witches and monsters and ghosts and serial killers and spiders, maybe even a Cocaine Bear, so I guess that's actually a lot of things. But another horror chain is finally here again, time to make some strides to reduce that portion of the watchlist, because it does tend to keep filling up, doesn't it?
Also starring Dean Fleischer Camp, Rosa Salazar (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Thomas Mann (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Lesley Stahl (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Joe Gabler, Shari Finkelstein, Samuel Painter, Blake Hittle, Scott Osterman, Jeremy Evans,
with the voices of Jenny Slate (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Fearless"), Sarah Thyre, Nathan Fielder (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jessi Klein, Peter Bonerz (last seen in 'Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Jamie Leonhart, and archive footage of Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Brian Williams (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Victoria Justice (last seen in "Fun Size").
RATING: 5 out of 10 potted plants
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