Review of The Shape of Water (2017) by Mt L — 21 Jan 2018

What's with the hype? Compared to Pan's Labyrinth this movie is a mess.

Others have recounted the many ridiculous elements of this movie, like why is a cleaning lady granted unfettered access to a highly secret government asset, why wait for the canal to open, just put him directly in the ocean, and so on.

So I will focus on the ham-fisted "political" statements with which we are bludgeoned unendingly:

1. The villain checks all the boxes: a racist, misogynist, violent, insensitive, sexual harassing, uber-patriotic white male. We are not just supposed to hate this guy, we are being emphatically told "you MUST hate him". He is everything we are told the typical Trump supporter embodies, everything that we mistakenly believe all men were like in the 50-60s, all wrapped into one highly unlikely and poorly conceived character. When he is killed by the alien water freak, we are to have no sympathy for this man who was conditioned to believe he was doing the right thing for his country his whole life, and not to have a single thought for the wife and children he leaves behind without a breadwinner. No, you must cheer for his destruction because progress.

2. There's a practically irrelevant "bad person" character who seems to be shoehorned into the script only to demonstrate homophobia and racism (in a poorly executed and acted scene) at just the right time. Of course he's a white male. Because civil rights is relevant in a movie about mutant sex?

3. The only white male who seems to have a shred of conscience is.. drum roll.. a communist secret agent (who btw kills an innocent soldier which is only blithely mentioned later). Can the "alt-right" (of which I am certainly not a part) be somehow forgiven for their outlandish conspiracy theories that "the left" is Marxist, anti-white-male, etc etc? Probably not, but this film is fuel for the fire.

4. The one black man in this film with a speaking part is a worthless, spineless coward who is unceasingly henpecked by his wife, played by Octavia Spencer, who plays the complex role of "sassy black woman" yet again.

Also, unlike Pan's Labyrinth which allows for introspective questioning.. aka.. did these events really happen as shown?.. Shape of Water is plain as day: A mutant water freak with a hidden penis has sex with the protagonist. Something tells me if they made a movie about an outcast man who finds an alien/mutant/non-human-female to have sex with, there would be a general outcry from the rabid feminist type who for some reason have issues with men using sex dolls... because objectification.

The movie suffers from far far more issues than the "political" things I mentioned. I'm entirely clueless as to why this is getting critical acclaim.