*WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite Disney movies as a child, but as I get older, I start to see a bit more flaw in the storyline, namely with a human girl falling in love with a Beast. Sure, he turned human at the end, but the rest seemed a little problematic.

Keeping that fact in mind, I am sure some of you have the same thoughts, and even more trouble understanding the now 7 Golden Globe award-winning move The Shape of Water.

I did not know a lot before going to see it except there was a human girl who falls in love with a fish-man. I was pretty much expecting to see something super taboo and super weird.

I was partially right, though the movie had a lot of elements going on that I was not expecting. For one, the main character, Eliza, is mute (which I knew from the trailer), but there is a lot of talk about the definition of humanity as the movie goes on, a lot surrounding the idea that the lab Fish Man was contained in wanted to kill him because he was not human and did not have the ability to speak.

Eliza makes the point that if speech makes a human, she is not human either because she can only communicate in sign language. My mind was blown, and I stifled back some tears for the sake of the friend I went with.

For another thing, the movie had a charming score to it that made the sections between the tense and romantic out to be a bit more campy (I told my mom it was a bit like The Grand Budapest Hotel, but that might be an entirely wrong assumption, seeing as I’ve only seen that movie once as well).

The idea that Eliza lives above a movie theater and there are old Hollywood movie-musical songs playing throughout the movie made the whole thing has a sweet, dreamy quality to it.

The plots themselves intertwined with some serious issues. Like most movies that take place in during the space race, there were racist and sexist elements. Eliza’s workmate is played by Octavia Spencer (and before we go further, know I LOVE HER. She can do no wrong in movies), and there were some particularly rude comments made in her direction.

There were also some homophobic jabs and a particularly crazy and vile villain serving as the security guard brought it to guard “the asset” Fish Man. Said psychopath develops an obsession with Eliza and thinks her inability to speak (or protest, it seems) is sexy. Excuse me as I vomit a little….

Alright, moving past that.

The fish sex did happen, but we did not see it as much as heard about it, and that scene was pretty funny (another time Octavia Spencer was amazing). By the time it did happen, though, we had seen so much happen that it didn’t phase me as much as I thought it would.

If you get the chance, see this movie, and if you already have, let me know what you thought!