Decent, but not very original

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2018)

I'm not sure if I really liked this film all that much. There are certainly elements I enjoyed a lot, but there were also a lot of cheesy, stereotypical characters, which I really felt dragged the quality down a bit. The romance is very rushed. Honestly, the story of Michael Shannon's character finding and capturing the fishman seems like it would be more interesting than this story. I think the Shape of Water would have worked better as a mini series, as everything is just a bit too rushed in the film. It feels like a shortened version of the story. The story itself isn't exactly the most original, just because you have a human fall in love with a nonhuman doesn't mean the rest of the plot hasn't been done many times before. As for the visuals, they were pretty fantastic, the creature design and Doug Jones' performance are big pluses for me. Guillermo del Toro does a decent job directing, and I liked the overall look of the film, both owing a lot to the cinematography and editing. Sally Hawkins is pretty great, and Richard Jenkins nearly steals the film. Michael Shannon does a great job as usual, despite his character being something of a cliche. Michael Stuhlbarg is also really good. Octavia Spencer's character was the only one I didn't really like. I found her to be somewhat annoying. But that could just be me. Overall this film is well made, but the story itself happens too fast and is lacking a lot of originality. Still, I enjoyed enough of it to recommended it. 70\100
POTENTIAL SPOILERS IN THIS SECTION
My biggest complaints with the Shape of Water are the rushed pacing and somewhat unoriginal story. Well, I personally think this movie would have been better as a series. Maybe the first season is about Micheal Shannon searching for, and finding, the fishman, and bringing him to the city. Then the second can focus on Sally Hawkins and her building a relationship with the fishman. These two seasons could be fairly short. Then the third and final season could be longer, about planning and executing the escape, and basically the whole last act of the film. Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but I think that would have been better. It might also help with the unoriginality complaint if it's focued better on developing the characters and having more time to do so, so that's the overall story isn't so in-your-face. As it is, I just kept thinking it was basically Free Willy, except nobody had sex with the whale in Free Willy. Either way, I still liked the Shape of Water quite a bit, but I didn't love it like I wanted to. I certainly don't think it's Best Picture quality.