Review of The Shape of Water (2017) by Dean W — 24 Nov 2017
An update of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, except this time the feelings are mutual. An uneven mess of a film that never really gets going, it drags with unneeded subplots about Russians and Spies.
The film is gorgeous, the production design and costuming are amazing. But the film hinges on caring about the relationship between the cleaning woman and the creature and there's no reason to. The creature looks like a rejected Abe Sapien design from Hellboy, while something more menacing would have worked better to show she could see the good inside him.
One thing that brings down the house of cards is Sally Hawkins' performance. Her and del Toro keep the Hollywood tradition going of having characters that are mute, deaf, or blind act retarded (you know, as in slow) with her mouth alternating between partially or completely agape.
It does not convey a childlike sense of wonder to her, but makes for a more annoying quality that further distances ourselves from her character and seems if she could talk, she'd probably not say anything worth hearing.
Richard Jenkins easily steals the show from Hawkins as her artist neighbor. A delusional sad sack that would make for a more interesting character to follow for 2 hours. Micheal Shannon as the bad guy chews the scenery here and is very memorable and a character you fell bad for for reasons such as he's given such awful dialouge as every time he opens his mouth he says something bad about an ethnic group or social class that it becomes painfully cliche and that del Toro really puts him through the ringer that at a certain point you feel bad for him and his situation, as much a victim as any with circumstances beyond his control.
in interviews del Toro has said his character is based on the square-jawed hero from B-movies of the era and here he's the bad guy. Problem with that is he's never from the first scene he's in portrayed as anything but the villain.
Which shows that del Toro's love of sci-fi might come more from the schlock of Mexican wrestlers vs anything supernatural that moves films than the Hollywood films he's parodying because the Army guy was often the villain in those.
By the end it's a heavy-handed debacle with a twist that means everything and is severely glossed over.
This review of The Shape of Water (2017) was written by Dean W on 24 Nov 2017.
The Shape of Water has generally received very positive reviews.
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