Fifty Shades Of Grey - movie review
Fifty Shades Of Grey
Plot: Literature student Anastasia Steele's life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey.
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Certificate: 18 (strong sex)
Runtime: 2hrs 5 mins
Release Date: Friday 13th February 2015
Guys, ever been kicked in the balls? Hurts, doesn't it? Ladies, ever been punched in your hoo-ha? I don't know from experience but I'd imagine it's pretty painful no? Well, consider those methods of torture wonderful compared to the absolutely terrifying phenomenon that is BDSM: The Movie *ahem*, I mean Softcore Porn *AHEM* sorry, it's Fifty Shades Of Grey. The first one. Yeah, there's three of these turds. Excuse me while I scream into a pillow.
There are only a few positives with Fifty Shades. One of those is Dakota Johnson. She actually gives a damn. Why? I've no idea but at least a small, miniscule part of her is trying to make this film watchable or at the very least, aiming to do something interesting with her character. Johnson is, mostly, all smiles and plays the innocent lovey-dovey type well. Deep down, I can see tiny moments creep through where Johnson's character is gradually becoming infatuated with Mr. Grey and I buy that conviction. Johnson is also fairly decent in some of the comedic sequences, or, at least makes a few lines land effectively when the writing isn't all over the place. It's not all sunshine and rainbows for her entire performance though as she does come a cropper more often than not. It seems that whenever Johnson hits a stride in this film, she's seemingly far better than the movie she's starting in, deserves. However, when Johnson fails to make the poor dialogue work, and trust me when I say that Daniel Day Lewis would struggle here, she's acting at the lowest calibre imaginable. But, and here's where it takes the biscuit, Dakota Johnson, daughter of beloved actor Don Johnson, plays the character whose name is... Anastasia Steele. Anastasia Steele. Come on E. L. James, now you're just asking me to joke about your sexual depravity. Apart from having a pornstar name, Anastasia Steele is the worst written character in cinematic history. In cinema today, it's brilliant to see a running theme about depicting the strength and independence of women but in Fifty Shades, Anastasia is constantly being saved by Christian making her an emotionless black hole of a character. There are no redeeming qualities about her. She, apparently, needs a man to save her 24/7 and will come crawling back to Christian no matter what he does to her and the film presents that in a romantic way. I cannot think of a more preposterously written and thought-out character ever put to film.
As the object of Anastasia's affections, Jamie Dornan portrays the businessman that turns the horny middle aged women that see this shit, into synchronising water fountains. I like Dornan. I've seen his work, other than this, and he has proved himself to have quality acting chops. SO WHY DID HE LEAVE THEM IN HIS TRAILER FOR THIS FILM? From hearing comments about the book, the one (and only) praise that I hear is that Christian Grey has layers to be explored. All Dornan had to do was give some oomph into his performance and he's halfway there. Alas, he contained about as much personality a flogger hung in his red room. Cue to very much intended puns but Dornan is entirely stiff, wooden, rigid and unyieldingly dull (ran out of innuendos) as Christian Grey. This man must be a robot because he is vacant of a personality. I'm sure if we cut him open, all we'd find is machinery programmed to partake in the oddest sex acts possible. Johnson tried in her performance. Dornan immediately accepts defeat and spends his screentime praying his career will still be intact. To make matters even more perplexing, we still know nothing about Christian. He was abused when younger and somehow, that's led him into a life of bondage. What does his business even manage? All we ever learn is that he has a ton of money from a company that no one knows anything about. And before some middle aged loner who gets off on hearing about Anastasia's inner goddess orgasming complains how we don't need to know what Grey manages, my answer would be to a) get a life and b) it's called lazy writing. Neither of the two share an ounce of romantic chemistry and I'd probably be more turned on seeing two dirty, old hobos going at it because at least there would be a worthwhile climax. If you've ever been on sites such as Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr or any social media platforms, you'd know by now that the actual relationship is disgusting, horrible and manipulative. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that that's how it comes across EXACTLY in the film. Instead of being the cutting edge romance most hyped it to be, all I saw was a guy manipulate someone into doing his very bidding both emotionally and sexually. Now, I'm no expert but that's fucked up. Yet people think it's romantic. What planet do you people live on?
FACT: The movie is banned in Kenya due to prolonged and explicit sexual scenes. Anyone who distributes or shows the movie is liable to prosecution. Lucky them.
Fifty Shades Of Grey happens to be the funniest comedy of this decade and that, in itself, is hysterical. Simply the dialogue alone had me in stitches, so much so that I had to leave the screen to take a breather so a gang of desperate women who were drooling at the sight of Jamie Dornan's pubes, didn't beat me to death with their brought from home cucumbers. This has to be one of the most horrendous scripts ever written. How? HOW!!?? did this get the all clear from producers? For those of you who don't know, the original screenwriter for this film had the script all planned out, taking some considerable artistic liberties until crazy cat lady herself, E. L. James, bombarded her way in and demanded she have creative control. Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea? This is the woman who got famous after writing Twilight fan fiction full of bad grammar and terrible story structure and you thought, 'Oh yeah, she clearly knows how to write a screenplay." WTF! She can't even make a proper sentence and you think she's worthy of creative input. She should be lucky this even got made. Going back to the dialogue, it's atrocious. With lines such as "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard" and "I'm Fifty Shades of fucked up" this film serves as the greatest drinking game. Just take a shot any time you laugh. You'll need rehab after but it'll be worth it. There's even a scene where Christian leans over to Anastasia and takes a bite out of her toast. I swear to God, if anyone did that to me, I'd unleash hell. To give Fifty Shades some credit where it's due, the director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, attempts to make the film more classy than it had to be. She has a keen eye for directing and, in some instances, creates some intriguing shots including a unique angle to see an arse be spanked. I never thought I'd write that. But here's where Fifty Shades had some, albeit, minor potential. Everyone knows the books had some fairly racy sexual encounters where E. L. James was living her sexual fantasies in this fictional world whilst clearly revealing that her sex life was in peril. In actuality, all of this build up about how this film was going to have the sexiest fornicating known to cinema, reduce most women to giggling schoolgirls and make boyfriends who are dragged along feel inadequate, turned out to be actually tame. It thinks it's being porn but instead, think Babestation with fetishes. A couple spanks, hands being tied and two hilarious (unintentional) sequences involving niggling an ice cube down Anastasia's body and whipping her with a peacock feather. This just isn't sexy. It's comedy. It also got nominated for an Oscar. Ok, it was for best song but still... It technically, should be known as 'The Oscar Nominated, Fifty Shades Of Grey'. In actual fact, everyone knows this as the 'Shitty Whips and Tits Movie'.
Of course, this was never going to be a masterpiece but with a director doing her best and a lead actress trying to give something worthy of note it could have, at the very least, been tolerable. The writing is gob-smackingly dire making the film into a comedy. In that vein, I cannot say that I had a terrible time watching this because it supplied me with laughs, but when I wasn't finding this atrocity comical, I suffered and suffered and suffered until the credits rolled. Then the sequel came along...
My Verdict: 3/10
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