Water Really Is Shapeless

I thank my lucky stars that I have some friends who are SAG members and are nice enough to lend their annual screeners.   That way, I don't spend seventeen dollars to see junk like "The Shape of Water."  As inexplicable as the title is, so, too, is the film which is as pointless as water is shapeless.

You couldn't tell by the critical reviews of this Guillermo Del Toro garbage dump.   Movie critics are lauding this film as a work of art.   A sheer masterpiece.   Watch it twice and all illnesses will be healed, praise Jesus.  Okay, I will admit that it often is interesting to look at.   But so is the daily Amtrak derailment.  The whole movie has this greenish tint, which I guess was done on purpose.   To me, it appeared like it was all shot through a bowl of lime Jell-o.

The plot of "The Shape of Water" is utterly ridiculous.  Remember "The Creature from the Black Lagoon?"  Well, mix in a little of "The Artist" and you've got what amounts to a poor two-hour excuse to buy a box of Goobers.  

So you've got the professional cinematic villain Michael Shannon bringing back some thing he caught down in South America to a Baltimore lab.  Why Baltimore?   Why not?   Well, anyway, in said lab, there are a couple of cleaning ladies at night played by Sally Hawkins and the always annoying Octavia Spencer who literally plays her character like she is a slave on a Southern plantation circa 1856.  Hawkins plays a lonely deaf woman who subsists on hard boiled eggs which she ultimately uses to befriend the scaly creature.

And that is it.  This is, of course, a forbidden romance and you just know that Shannon will be beating the shit out of somebody by the end of the picture.  Meanwhile, there is one set piece where Hawkins' character, now hopelessly in love with the monster, imagines the two of them dancing in black and white like Fred and Ginger in "Swing Time."  Hello?  Anybody?

If the whole thing hasn't collapsed for you yet, wait till you see the scene where she floods her bathroom to the ceiling so she and the creature can have sex under water.   Paging the logic police and any physicist who will explain that the weight of water would destroy the entire apartment building.  Water has shape and also is very, very heavy, gang.

Want to know the most ridiculous news yet?  This thing grabbed 13 Oscar nominations and is apparently one of the two front runners for Best Picture?  I can only assume that, besides the flu, all of Hollywood has become afflicted with acute glaucoma.

If you must, find a SAG member and only see this for free.   Better yet, don't bother at all.

LEN'S RATING:  One-and-a-half stars.

Dinner last night:  Roast beef with potatoes and onions.