The Emperor's New Clothes

Rating: 5/10 (25 April 2018)

Del Toro's finest? Really? What I saw was Sally Hawkins having an affair with the creature from the black lagoon. I tried to imagine it was a veiled attack on racism, but it could just as easily be seen as pro-bestiality propaganda. I heard Del Toro refer to it as a fairy tale for our times, and I presumed he meant these times of revealed male sexual harassment in the movie industry. So Sally gets her kit off in the first five minutes and we get a gratuitous look at her from above in the bath. Beautiful, yes; necessary, no. No balancing male nudity because the creature from the black lagoon is already latex naked. And then they put towels long the edges of the bathroom door and fill the room up with water so they can have aqua sex, although of course Sally can't breathe under water, and of course, rooms in houses are not water tight. Sally got the idea from seeing Paddington do it back at her house a couple of years earlier, but that was a kids' movie. It's silly and funny in a kids' movie. What are we supposed to make of it in a grown-ups' film?