Memoir of a Snail

Who knew a snail’s memoir could teach me so much about myself? Snailed it

Heart breaking and soul-crushing but also so beautiful and hopeful.

The first half of this is effortlessly wonderful. Elliot is playing to his strengths of balancing preciousness and unexpected frankness in a deftly funny and lovely package. The second half...kinda doesn't work at all? Suddenly, Elliot's precise touch goes pear-shaped, and everything feels so clumsy and heavy-handed. It's becomes a string of miscalculations, concluding with its most unfortunate misstep. I really did love this for a while, but the back end completely soured the experience for me.

Beautiful, grim, funny, poignant, and depressing as hell yet sweetly optimistic, sometimes within individual moments. The level of thought, care, and detail paid to the characters, narrative, and animation are all extraordinary

I'm usually put off by the stylistic choices of stop motion animation, especially when it tends to be dark, quirky, and gothic. It takes a very special story to help me look past that bias and fully immerse myself in the world. This film did that without a doubt. Underneath the quirk is an intensely soul-baring tale worth every shred of attention you can muster.