Fifty Shades of Grey - A Frustrated Review

I guess you've all heard of Fifty Shades of Grey. If not, here's the rundown: it was book by E.L. James that originated as a Twilight fan-fiction. It became immensely popular, and got lots of media attention, becoming a best-seller. However, the attention it got was mainly due to its controversial sexual themes, like sadomasochism. In addition, the book explicitly describes the sexual content to the last detail. Due to its popularity, movie studios decided to cash in on it by making a film adaptation, with Nowhere Boy director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, directing it. Where do I begin?

All right, to its credit, I will have to say that it is well-shot, providing some good imagery and well-lit scenes, in addition to great landscape shots of Seattle. Also, I find the look of the movie visually appealing when it comes to having cloudy skies. However, that's where the positives end. From now on, I am not going to be happy for the rest of the review.

The plot follows college student Anastasia Steele (played by Dakota Johnson) who starts the movie off by interviewing billionaire Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan). They start to have a liking to each other, and through bumping into each other a couple of times in addition to contrivance, they form a "relationship," and I'm using that word very loosely. I'm going to be honest here, I didn't think it started out too bad. Definitely not great, but barely bearable. Can't say much about what happens next.

Grey tells her that he is not a romantic man and reveals his "playroom" full of... um, certain toys and gears. He then informs her that she has to sign a contract related to BDSM, involving lots of sex, domestic abuse, and no romance. That is the rest of the movie right there.

So, yeah, Ana decides to endure all this stuff for pleasure. Scratch that: for HIS pleasure. Are we supposed to sympathize with her or something? That's not to mention all the parallels with Twilight that it has, the most important being Grey/Edward telling Ana/Bella to stay away from him, but she keeps coming back to him anyway or he comes to her. At first, I found it a little believable that Grey understands if she doesn't want to go through this BDSM nonsense, but that's all thrown out the window very quickly.

As for the sex scenes... meh. They're eyebrow-raising, sure, but it's your typical R-rated softcore porn that are just there and lack any real substance. The fact that both the book and the movie are notorious for its explicit sexual content makes them very gimmicky. Why does that sound familiar?

Of course, Blue is the Warmest Color, which Taylor-Johnson actually took some inspiration from. That movie's main gimmick was its graphic sexual content, showing scenes of Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos getting it on with each other, which is probably the main reason people went to see it. At least with those, you can see how much passion was put in them and how convincing they were, but take those out, and we still have an emotionally touching and romantic movie. As for Fifty Shades, take out the sex scenes and it's your generic "romance" or whatever you call it.

I'm not even gonna complain a lot about the actors and how they were. They're bland and lack any chemistry due to its contrived plot and terrible script. There are just so many awful and corny pieces of dialogue that I don't even know what to feel when they deliver their lines.

Lastly, the movie ends on a cliffhanger. Yeah, like they're gonna adapt the other two books--

Source: OLV

Behold, the next Twlight: a movie series that will plague the movie industry for a couple of years and will make money regardless of the umpteen naysayers.

Seeing as how this was originally a fan fiction, why stop there? How about turning "My Little Dashie" into a movie or "Dipper Goes to Tac--" wait, no! Not that one! Just no!

Honestly, this movie is just terrible. Save for the decent visuals and maybe Danny Elfman's score, the plot is stupid, the themes of dominance/submission and sadomasochism are repulsive, and the acting is wooden. And worst of all, neither Gilbert Gottfried nor George Takei were hired to narrate it, but that's just me.

If I had that time travel ability from About Time, I would use it to go watch Kingsman: The Secret Service instead. It's that bad. Using my rating system, I would call it...

SOMETHING AWFUL

It's not the worst thing that I've ever seen, but this seriously made me angry that this exists. I was so upset leaving the auditorium knowing I watched this piece of trash. It's almost like I felt violated.

The bright side is that I didn't pay to see it since I'm an employee at a movie theater. Though I sympathize with those who paid matinee or full price to see it and come out with a sour taste in their mouths. I also sympathize with those guys who got dragged in by their girlfriends to see it, instead of seeing, I don't know, Kingsman: The Secret Service!

You're probably asking, "why didn't you see Kingsman if you knew this movie was going to be bad?" One reason is that I had to see it my own eyes, so I can tell tell you guys not to bother seeing it. However, as a pessimist, it's going to make a lot of money no matter how many people I want to help spare themselves from this abomination. If you haven't seen it, consider yourselves lucky. Gosh, this movie reeks!