I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror!
I don’t want to write a review of Fifty Shades of Grey and resort to the internet standard of picking it apart with a bunch of pithy, dick-ish remarks instead of actually reviewing the film. Unfortunately, I don’t see that I have a choice.
I understand that I am, in no stretch, the target audience for Fifty Shades of Grey.
Sure I like nudity and sex in cinema but the whole supposed romance thing loses me. It is hard for a chubby thirty-nine year father of two to relate to the yearnings and sticky fumblings of a twenty-one college senior as she is swept off her feet (and swatted on the ass) by an eccentric billionaire with the personality of a wool sock.
I went into this screening very mindful of this disconnect and aware that 100 million copies sold of the Grey trilogy of books must signify that there is something of value hidden in those pages. As a movie reviewer, my job is to identify that merit and speak to it. Is Fifty Shades of Grey a good example of the genre? Will it turn on the masses and provoke orgies in the streets? Is it, in any way at all, a good movie?
The answers are: No, no and no.
Problem Number One: Nothing happens.
No joke- about an hour and a half into the film I heard a woman in the audience yawn like a bear in a Tex Avery cartoon. This movie is slow. This movie is boring.
It takes two hours for this nothing to occur in all of its hollow glory. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) meets Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). He, for some unclear reason, must have her. After about an hour of lifeless flirting, he “gets” her. Reveals that he’s into S & M. She doesn’t know what to do. He wants her to sign a contract. She doesn’t and [SPOILER ALERT BUT I’M SURE NEARLY EVERYONE SEEING THIS FILM OR HAS ANY INTEREST AT ALL KNOWS THE STORY AS THEY PROBABLY READ IT AND MEMORIZED THE 5 COMPONANTS THAT THE PLOT CONTAINS WHICH COULD BE SUMMED UP ON THE SIDE PANEL OF A CEREAL BOX) she leaves him.
There is no real conflict. There is no arch. This is the first act and author E.L. James did not waste her time with concocting any mini-acts for this first installment. The book was too busy with the sex scenes. The movie tries to rush through them causing….
Problem Number Two: Not enough sex/Zero Chemistry between Grey and Steele.
Less than fifteen of the film’s hundred and twenty five minutes is spent getting to the good stuff. While that sounds like plenty, the problem is the story is so thin and characters so one-note, the movie depends on the sex to succeed. Everything is too tame and repetitive. Void of any tension or titillation because the leads share not one dram of chemistry.
I’m a fan of Johnson. I was one of the eight people that watched her Fox sitcom Ben and Kate and I believe she has solid comedic talent. Here, she fumbles around too much, consistently biting her bottom lip and mistaking doe eyed glances for heartfelt looks of desire. Dornan’s Grey does not seem mysterious or intriguing. He is a lifeless character whose motivations are kept so vague that it merely is annoying.
Problem Number Three: The Dialogue is the worst I’ve ever seen in any film. Ever.
Movies on the Lifetime Channel have better banter. I’m not trying to be funny. Those movies at least use adjectives. The words are so dumbed down, so mono-syllabic, that the movie might as well have just used grunts and hand gestures to convey its communication. Unbelievable.
And finally Problem Number Four: It will make hundreds of millions of dollars.
And that’s fine. I really don’t care. Transformers 4 making a billion bucks worldwide killed whatever soul I had left. If you are a fan of the book, maybe this will represent you fantasies enough to warrant the ticket price. But I don’t get it.