Win some, lose a lot

Rating: 4/10 (5 March 2018)

If you decide to go and see the movie without any previous knowledge on the plot, you might have a decent time, at least for the first 20 minutes or so. But as the story progresses, your disappointment progresses with it as well. It's no more nor less than Del Toro's take on your classic Beauty and the beast, literally. The beautiful colors, lighting design and scenery tick all the right boxes for the award season (along with the two leading ladies, Octavia Spencer as the forceful cleaner and Sally Field in the main role, as her frail, mute collegue, who threads through life in a touchingly heartwarming way. There's the gay neighbor and the cruel white boss, so we got all the ingredients for a money-shoveling crowd-pleaser. Your sympathies are clearly all the time on the fragile heroine's side, and beyond it, the story is basically completely redundant, with a couple of nude scenes that make up for the utter predictability of the movie.