Metacritic reviews

As hilarious as it is heart-wrenching – frequently within the same scene.

Elements that might feel frivolous on first mention invariably pay off later, as Elliot brings things around in thoughtful and emotional ways, to the point you forget you’re watching people made of Plasticine.

Elliot’s stop-motion work feels authentic and unglamorized in ways that we don’t often see in many mainstream animated movies.

It’s a gorgeous film, but it’s also an emotionally intelligent movie, one that shifts and flows between comedy and tragedy, reminding us that life can only be lived forwards.

Yes, life can only be understood backwards, but Memoir of a Snail makes a sweetly compelling case that we’ll see the beauty in it one day — such a sweetly compelling case, in fact, that you might just start looking for it now

There’s an ingenuousness and innocence to Memoir of a Snail, a family-entertainment approachability that belies a strange intensity.

The artisanal spirit and abundant creativity of the enterprise is undeniable, immersing us in a vivid world crafted from clay, wire, paper and paint, without a single frame of CG imagery.

It’s dazzling as handiwork and world-building, but more questionable if we scrutinize it as just as a work or piece of psychological realism, which it has aspirations of being.

Adam Elliot, whose work is no stranger to despondency, never allows the film to fully succumb to despair.

A film that’s as heart-tugging as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and great physical detail using only clay, wire, paper and paint.