Finally saw it. Feeling a bit ambivalent really. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but at the same time I felt a bit 'is that all there is?' at the end. All of the performances were good, especially Sally Hawkins, but apart from her they didn't break a sweat fitting (albeit very well) into well-worn character roles. I felt the fish-man was underdone to the point where I longed for something to make me care about his fate, or think of him as anything other than a bloke in a fish costume. There was a kind of polished reproduction-world thing going on: the feeling that the world where the film was staged was an immense and detailed museum. Films that do this kind of things , for instance Amelie, the Grand Budapest Hotel, Hugo and probably several others, usually use the style to showcase fast-moving, complex plots. The plot here is as simple as it gets and the result is that although it looks gorgeous, it also looks (imho) a tad thin.
A few reviewers have said that it's his best film. For me it isn't quite up there with Cronos, the Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth.never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead |