At times, we all feel like a fish out of water...

Rating: 7/10 (22 December 2017)

Saw this film as a rare in-theater experience, with my 15 year old boys. They both gave it enthusiastic two fingers, errr thumbs, up. It is a love story, albeit one as you know from the poster with a creature from Del Toro's subconscious.
The film floats fairly smoothly, and perhaps for that reason I found myself drifting towards Michael Shannon's character. And yet they pile villainous vices upon him a tad too much for my taste. A befuddled Richard Jenkins adds sweetness beyond a piece of pie or three.
It's easy enough to lie back and enjoy the clever creativity of Del Toro, and the soundtrack is a nice blend of incidental music with songs from a simpler era (with more intricate dance steps.) Will Ms. Hawkins be another Oscar award winner rewarded for being female and mute (isn't that some kind of weird Hollywood tacit thing).
For what it's worth, I would have been fine seeing this on a small screen, although it was nice for the boys to enjoy it in proper fashion (and as a break during their finals week to boot!). By the way it is a R-rated film, with a couple of sex scenes...which is not a huge deal....but one of them has somewhat of a violent edge to it, and it is NOT one of the interspecies scenes. Anyways, something for parents though I suspect I'm not alone in feeling like 15 years olds can vary from feeling like 12 to 18 year olds. By the way we talked about it afterwards and they felt it was not a big deal.
As for the film overall, again gorgeous and such a tremendous opening scene, the trailer we had all seen long ago maybe set my sights a little too high, but on my own amphibious DNA I swear Blade Runner 2049 is a far richer picture.