I finally watched 'The Shape of Water'.

A couple of weeks ago me and my friend had the chance to watch Guillermo del Toro's film 'The Shape of Water'. After having postponed watching the movie for quite some time, we managed to find time to finally watch it.

The reason that we both wanted to watch the film was pretty obvious. Since the movie had won the Academy Award for best picture earlier this year, we thought that it would be a safe bet to watch it and give it a chance.

So having now seen the film, it has to be said that I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. Even though I obviously don't think that the movie is bad per se, there are some aspects about it that didn't work that well.

In any case, when it comes to the film, 'The Shape of Water', is a story about a relationship between a lonely mute cleaning lady and a mysterious sea creature. It's a fairy tale that takes place during the cold war in a high security laboratory in the U.S. 

When it comes to the story in the film, there's no denying that during its first half, the movie manages to be really entertaining and charming. It manages to keep you interested and you want to know more about the world the you're being introduced to.

After all, the first half of the movie is when I enjoyed watching all the things that happened in the movie. I found the stuff to be fascinating and it's obvious that a lot of work went into making sure that everything would look as 'authentic' as possible.

When it comes to the characters in the movie, this is the part when it's easy to feel for the main characters too. You can't help but to feel for the main protagonist lady who is trying to save the sea creature from being killed.

Not surprisingly, when the escape from the high security installment eventually happens, the movie is at its best. This is when it feels like you're watching a film that really knows what it's about and that it can't do anything wrong.

Unfortunately, it's during the second half of the movie when the story more or less runs out of steam. This is when the script goes on an autopilot and the writers are only able to come up with story beats that are predictable and lazy.

By that I mean that in the second half of the movie, there are too many moments where the characters make very little sense. In these scenes it's the plot of the movie that drives the characters instead of the characters driving the plot.

Especially when it comes to the scene where the doctor who helped our cleaning lady gives out crucial information to the villain, I just couldn't help but to be disappointed. This forced plot driven scene in my opinion made no sense at all.

In that sense, when I think about the film as a whole, it's really unfortunate that there are problems in the film's script. It's really disappointing that the story gets unimaginative and that the writers took the 'easy' way out.

After all, had the writers decided to get a bit more creative in their decisions, the movie would have been better. Had they taken some risks and had they cut some of the needless 'villain' scenes, the story would have been much more coherent.

In the end, I can't but help to be slightly underwhelmed by 'The Shape of Water'. I can't help but to think that the movie - despite being well received - is a bit underwhelming and that the writers should have done their jobs better.

After all, even though there are a lot of good things about the movie, as a whole, there are too many flaws in the story. These problems that have to do with the film's screenplay weigh the movie down a bit too much.

In that sense, I can't help but to wonder how the film managed to win the best picture award at the Oscars. I can't help but to wonder how it did that, because at least in my opinion, the movie just isn't that good and doesn't live up to its reputation.