The film starts with an interesting premise: during the Cold War era, a US government research center has captured a strange amphibious creature and the protagonist is a mute cleaning lady. From the beginning the story overflows with symbols if intolerance: towards women, towards handicapped people, black people, amphibious people, immigrants, gays, old people, and so on and so on. It's like it's trying to check all the boxes, see how many it gets in a single row. But while it does this, the story itself just stalls. This is a two hour long movie in which nothing much happens. It shows intolerance, but doesn't go anywhere with it. Yes, we know people are assholes and that during that era, they were slightly worse than now. It does nothing for the plot, which is predictable and boring.

The bad man is reminiscent of Pan's Labyrinth villain and the main character a girl with an active imagination, but it is way slower and more poorly executed than Pan's. It is clearly a worse movie than that was. To put it mildly, I am at a loss for why this film won Best Picture. It was visually interesting, but you couldn't take it seriously. It went from metaphor to reality with no regard to the previous context. A villain that seemed to not have a purpose other than being obtuse and evil, a woman who after learning that the creature has bit two fingers off a man's hand goes near it and offers it food from her own hand, a black best friend who's only role is to gossip about her irrelevant husband, some Russian spies that seem more interested in food than in spying, the list goes on and on. It's not like the actors didn't do a good job, it's not that the direction or the sets were faulty, but the story itself was nothing more than a long slow cliche.

It is the mid-1960s. Elisa is mute, and a cleaner at a US government experiment facility. Her life is quite mundane and unfulfilled. Then the facility starts on a new project: the US government has captured a man-fish hybrid in South America and now they are seeing if the creature's unique physiology could have some uses for humans, especially for astronauts. Elisa becomes attached to the creature.

The winner of Best Picture at the 2018 Oscars, though difficult to see why. A pretty basic movie - a linear romantic drama with one-dimensional characters, cartoonish, badness-laid-on-so-thick-it's-laughable villains, conventional plot development and a fairly predictable ending. It's not that profound or original in its themes or development (unless the viewer has only seen a handful of movies in their life) - quite dumbed-down (though that might be more a reflection of modern audiences than anything else). If it wasn't for the excellent CGI, the sentimentality, the slickness of the plot development and some of the performances it would be just another B-grade creature feature.

Part of the problem is that director Guillermo del Toro tries to steer a path between fairy tale and gritty drama, and thus ends up with something that is tonally jarring and inconsistent. The movie from the start has a light, airy feel, the ideal set up for a sweet, all-ages drama. There's even some funny moments to help this along. Yet, interspersed with the lightness are several adult-orientated scenes. Even as the movie becomes darker, bloodier and grittier, del Toro still tries to cling to the fairy tale side.

Made as a plain fairy tale-like drama, suitable for all ages, this would have worked a whole lot better.

Not that it's that bad though. The movie moves at a decent pace and is quite entertaining. There is a decent level of intrigue and tension and Sally Hawkins puts in a great performance as Elisa.

Sally Hawkins puts in a lovely, sweet, almost sympathetic performance as the central character, it's her delicacy balanced against the harshness of the amphibious man that makes it so interesting.

It's not a film I'd sit through several times over, but I have seen it twice, and was as impressed with my second viewing as the first. It is a beautiful film, with the most glorious soundtrack, a feast for the eyes and ears alike.

I'm sure there was a social message here, it was perhaps over my head, what I saw was a good old fashioned love story, one with a difference, and a load of eggs.

It's sad, moving, funny, it's definitely very, very weird, but if you've seen any of his other movies, then you'll realise the inevitability of that.

It's a unique watch, and a rewarding one, 8/10.