I told myself I’d never watch this film, but here I am. And no, I didn’t pay to see it. It’s Friday, which means I have to review a bad movie. Fifty Shades of Grey is an erotic romance novel written by El James. It’s widely known to be one of the most controversial books ever. It’s one of the highest selling books in the world, and is sadly labeled as American literature. News that a film was being made was no surprise, seeing as the book sales were extremely successful. It has a colossal fan base–mostly women–who love the books and went to see porn together in the cinema. “Fifty Shades of Grey” is directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and stars Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dorman and no one else worth mentioning.
The plot–if I may be so bold to call it that–is very simple. A young woman named Anastasia Steele (Johnson) fills in for her sick roommate by doing an interview for her. She must interview Christian Grey (Dorman), a successful businessman who’s about as dull as a doormat. They have the interview in his office. Ana bites her lip as he looks at her in the most creepy stare possible. The two eventually end up forming a “relationship”. She soon finds out Christian is obsessed with sex, and they spend the majority of the film experimenting and babbling on about an abusive sex contract.
Before I utterly slam this mostly horrible piece of garbage, I want to praise some things. First of all, the best and only good performance in this film, comes from Dakota Johnson. She was very believable and likable to be quite honest. She honestly gave a decent performance. Unfortunately, she had to act next to an emotionless brick. Jamie Dorman is a bad actor. I will not say it was the worst performance I have ever seen in a film ever. That’s simply not the case. He was not as bad as the guy who screams “oh my god!” in Troll 2. He was however, boring, blank, and honestly creepy.
The film presents two main characters. Anastasia and Christian are the two characters we must follow for two hours. Are they interesting? Not really, no. The book itself may differ from the film in this way–I doubt it–but the characters are mostly shallow. They are very uninteresting for the majority of the film. Once again however, I must applaud Johnson for going full nude. It takes allot to be that commited and professional. Obviously, the novel is erotica. Therefore, it’s mostly all about sex. Lots of sex. The actual plot itself is centered on the sex. I applaud any film that is daring and adventurous when it comes to being explicit. However, in the case of this film, it’s all sex and zero substance.
Despite all the things that made me groan about this film, one thing was impressive; the cinematography. I know, I’m always talking about a movies camera work, but this film quite honestly had beautiful camera work. It was shot by Seamus McGarvey, who has been the director of photography on several well known films such as: We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Avengers, and Godzilla. His shots in this film are so stunning, well lit, and beautiful. However, this doesn’t hide that horrible script. It was written by Kelly Marcel, who I dont wish to slam seeing as she wasn’t given much to work with. The horrendous, vomit enducing dialogue is almost ever present. It’s so generic. It was like the sh*t dialogue you’d hear in a porno.
The final twenty to thirty minutes of this film frustrated me the most. I feel this movie had an opportunity to go into the psychological reasoning behind Grey’s obsessions. He is extremely manipulative, masogonistic, and abusive. Anastasia is literally being used and abused, yet she keeps coming back. It emotionally scars her. The film utterly refuses to inform the audience why she behaves this way. It plays it off as “sexy”. There were brief and fleeting moments where the film seemed like it would explore deeper, more thought provoking psychological themes, but it kept swatting them away.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” may not be the worst film of all time, nor as horrible as I estimated it would be, however it is a dull affair overall. The cinematography is beautiful, Dakota Johnson is very solid, there are a couple of genuinely comedic lines, and it skims the surface of some interesting psychological themes. It is also boring, emotionally flat, poorly written, and excessively annoying. BDSM is also inaccurately portrayed. If I had a dollar for every time Johnson bit her lip, I’d be a millionaire. I found myself yelling at the screen, “please stop!”.
{ 1.5/5 stars }
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