I’m combining these two reviews into one piece, because…both movies I couldn’t finish. I’ll explain the reasons for that later.
The first movie was Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Now I must state that Jenny Slate (the voice of Marcel) is my hall pass. That’s the joke my wife and I have, but when I saw her at the Critics’ Choice Awards a few years ago, I walked by and said to her, “I loved ‘Obvious Child’.” She looked at me, as if to say, “Do I know you?”
And after a few seconds of silence she said, without even a hint of a smile on her face, “Thanks” and I meekly walked away.
My wife, who had a few drinks in her, came back over to where I was 15 minutes later saying, “Oh my god, you’re not going to believe this! Jenny Slate is here! I’m going to go tell her about how much you love her.”
I told her about my lackluster interaction, and she laughed for about 2 minutes at my lack of game. Of course, “game” didn’t matter, as she wasn’t really my hall pass. First, the wife would have never approved and two, Slate would have never approved (this is, after all, the woman who dated Captain America for a year and is now engaged to a rather handsome artist). But I vowed not to hold that against her as I reviewed this movie.
I first heard of the Marcel character when Slate was on a late night show. She did the voice, and talked about the series of videos she did with it. It seemed cute enough. A shell that had a bulgy eye, and a pair of shoes to walk around on.
In this film, Marcel has been separated from the rest of his friends. His brother (in one of the rare funny moments) we’re told was left in pants pockets that were put in the washing machine, and now he just stares out the window looking at fire trucks. Her grandmother (Isabella Rossellini) is there, and their interactions were nothing to write home about.
They live in an Airbnb, and a filmmaker (Dean Fleischer Camp) staying there is doing a documentary on Marcel. We’re supposed to be blown away by watching the shell move about the house and creating various things. I suppose the use of travel by the inside of a tennis ball was mildly cute, but it got old quickly. Especially the various observations we hear from Marcel. The film was slow, and it made me wonder who would enjoy this. Certainly kids won’t. And it needed to be a lot more humorous and interesting for adults. While watching some of the ways Marcel gets around or gathers items, I thought about how much more clever a few of these things were done in Pixar films like Finding Nemo or the Toy Story series. My wife and I, bored to tears 40 minutes in, got up and left. But it’s getting high Rotten Tomatoes numbers, so…maybe it got better.
The second movie was a documentary, and we gave it an hour. The cliche critics always use is “Those are two hours I’ll never get back.” So to off-set that, if I have a lot of movies to review that week, if something is bad 40 minutes in, why let it be any more of a time suck? We gave this one an hour.
Learning about one of the most covered songs in music history (Hallelujah), while learning about the gravelly sounding singer, would be a fine topic. Here’s the problem. In 2005, we had “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.” A few years ago, we got “Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love” (which was great, especially with all the personal details). This documentary didn’t seem to be telling us much we didn’t get in those pictures.
It was mildly interesting, to hear the long-haired John Lissauer talk about working with Cohen and then not hearing from him for 8 years, and how Cohen ended up recording (the very disappointing album) Ladies Man, with Phil Spector (who not only created the “wall of sound” but was the opposite of a “ladies man” as he shot and killed a waitress he brought home to his mansion; now that would be a great documentary, but I digress).
Listening to friends and family, and musicians like Judy Collins, is sometimes interesting. Yet as much as I’ve been enjoying documentaries the last few decades, this kind of bored me.
Perhaps for someone that knew nothing of Cohen, finding out he came from a rich Jewish family in Montreal, and didn’t even get into music until he was over 30…that could be fun to learn. Or wondering how someone with a voice as bad as Dylan, could even make it. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a published poet who has a book under his belt, just belting out a song to Judy Collins and saying “I don’t know if this is a song or not” and her responding, “Yes it is, and I’ll be recording it tomorrow” (the tune was Suzanne).
The segments with music journalist Larry “Ratso” Sloman were boring. Listening to all this mumbo jumbo about this “spiritual seeker” fell on deaf ears, as I found him to be more of a player (or as his album title would suggest – a ladies man). Even Collins talked about spotting that about him early on and deciding not to get involved.
Instead of the seven year writing process of Hallelujah and how it evolved, perhaps a more interesting documentary could have been done covering this song, and 3 or 4 other songs that are classics (by other artists), and exploring the writing process. Former local singer/songwriter Stephen Bishop (It Might Be You, On and On) wrote a great book called “Diamond in the Rough” that talks about various songs and how they were created. It was immensely more interesting than this documentary.
One of the co-hosts of a radio show I did years ago, once approached me about the idea of doing a show that featured cover songs, where we’d play the original version and the covers. I liked the idea of doing that and talking about why the bands covered it, but told him I wasn’t so sure audiences would want to sit there and listen to The Kinks do “You Really Got Me” and have us talk about it for a bit, then playing Van Halen’s version and us talking about it again. I wasn’t sure that would be enough to hold listeners' interest. Well, with this documentary playing versions of Hallelujah we all love (Jeff Buckley, the much more talented son of Tim, and John Cale, the underrated member of Velvet Underground) – as well as the bad versions by Bono, Brandi Carlile and others…it made me realize I was right. Hearing a bunch of versions of the same song just doesn’t work. I mean, I remember reading 25 years ago about how Paul McCartney makes $38,000 a year for how many times one Beatles song is played (Yesterday), and that it was covered over 1,500 times. Would even the most hardcore Beatles fans be interested in seeing various orchestras and troubadours doing their versions?