Review: Fifty Shades of Grey

Mousy college student Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) fills in for her ill journalist roommate, interviewing rich young hunk businessman Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). Sparks immediately fly, but before they really get involved, Christian has a very specific set criteria for any relationship. He doesn’t ‘do’ relationships in the traditional sense. He just wants sex. No, not love-making. Sex. And not just the usual rumpy-pumpy, either. A carefully laid out (see what I did there?) contract details the very specific sexual acts that Ms. Steele (a virgin, I might add) will be required to engage in, mostly of the S&M variety. Anastasia is initially taken aback by all of this (and upon seeing Christian’s sex dungeon/playroom), but has fallen too far in love with Christian to back out, and agrees to become his ‘submissive’. But can she really handle a relationship with a cold fish who won’t let her in and just wants to tie her up and whip her? Max Martini plays Christian’s loyal chauffeur, Rachel Skarsten is his secretary, and Marcia Gay Harden his mother.

Based on an E.L. James novel (which I hear is terrible, I’ve never read it) that was creepily first drafted as “Twilight” Fan-Fic, this 2015 film adaptation by director Sam Taylor-Johnson (the rather interesting John Lennon flick “Nowhere Boy”) and screenwriter Kelly Marcel (co-writer of the excellent “Saving Mr. Banks”), is for the uninitiated like me, pretty much what I was expecting. Alternately boring, stupid, and creepy, it’s S&M for Twi-hards. Think about that for a minute. Why would you want to write about S&M on essentially a teenage (or even tween) level, and why would adults who are into S&M be interested in a seriously soft S&M story? I seriously didn’t get this one at all, and not only because I find S&M rather silly and laughable in and of itself.

I don’t know if the book is ‘harder’ (I’ve read that screenwriter Marcel apparently did have to remove a lot of edgier content and wasn’t happy about the final product), but for me the film was truly lost the moment the main character (played by Dakota Johnson, a very slightly better actress than her mother, father, and grandmother) negotiated the terms of the S&M contract, eliminating pretty much all of the things in the contract that (at least to an outsider like me- I swear I’m not into it!) seemed most indicative of S&M. I’m nowhere near an expert on well, anything in the vicinity of this subject, but this seemed closer to “Wild Orchid” or “Sliver” than genuine S&M to me. I mean, at one point he uses an ice cube to turn her on. I’m sorry, that’s not S&M, it’s a 90s direct-to-video softcore titty movie! And then there’s the hardware store scene. Yes, our heroine works in a hardware store. She even talks about ‘inches’ and ‘tools’. Mr. Grey buys rope. I mean, this is “Basic Instinct 2” levels of uncomfortable and embarrassing. It’s a Twi-hard Millennial’s idea of S&M, and this scene alone is perhaps the worst scene of dialogue in any film I’ve seen that wasn’t scripted by Edward D. Wood Jr. It’s not just that scene, though, there are clunkers throughout. The dialogue is porno-trocious: ‘I’d like to bite that lip’ Christian says out of bloody nowhere. And no way would a rich, cultured businessman use the phrase ‘Laters, baby!’. Yes, ‘Laters’, as if that’s an actual word in the English language. Nonsense. Oh, and Johnson’s reaction to having doggystyle sex is hilarious: ‘That was really nice!’. NICE? Really? Honestly, this screen version of Anastasia is about as raunchy as Anna Kendrick (Unless Anna Kendrick is into this kinda thing, I have no idea. She hasn’t said yes to my imaginary marriage proposal yet, either). No one could make a line like ‘I don’t make love. I fuck. Hard!’ not sound like a line from a bad porno, but Jamie Dornan certainly does flop with it. Oh, and he also has to deliver the phrase ‘Ball-twitchingly mad’ at one point too. Yep. And boy is this so not meant to be a comedy. It’s played eye-rollingly straight by all concerned. I’ve gotta say, he’s a pretty terrible choice for the lead, especially when you’ve got the perfectly suitable Max Martini sitting there playing the chauffeur. Dornan is literally a walking menswear billboard. Fuck it, he’s a cardboard cut-out. Johnson might overdo the mousy, adorkable thing, but at least she seems like a live human being. Grey is meant to be cold, not dead. He also has no edge, which is a real killer. I know he’s meant to be alluring, but Dornan has no gravitas or presence. He seems like a boy, really.

Getting back to the Twihard thing, the scene where Dornan takes off his shirt is some truly awful “Twilight” ‘female gaze’ bullshit. A film about testing sexual limits really ought to be on a more mature level than this. Teens have limits set for them, after all. Adults aren’t nearly as restricted, but E.L. James clearly just doesn’t have the imagination, I guess (Is spanking really the best you could come up with? Dude, even I know that’s a pretty popular thing amongst non-S&M couples for cryin’ out loud!). I really didn’t buy the Anastasia character, either, and it’s a big problem. It’s a story about an S&M relationship where the girl is a mousy, Plain Jane virgin who is visibly not 100% into the S&M. This just seemed foul to me, and frankly plain weird. Through Johnson’s performance, she suggests in no way whatsoever would her character be into an S&M relationship…and it’s her first sexual relationship? I’m no expert on S&M or relationships in general for that matter, but that seems unrealistic, seriously weird, and truly creepy to me. I don’t have any moral objections to S&M per se, it’s perfectly fine if that’s what people want, and I don’t find it (or this material) inherently misogynistic. After all, Grey himself started out as a submissive in his first S&M experience (he also has serious mother issues, to anyone paying attention), and both the book and the film are helmed by women, with the latter having an obvious female gaze. So it’s not hateful towards women at all. Hell, Grey’s so damn wimpy that even his possessiveness is pathetic. He’s no misogynist (possibly a sociopath), he’s a wimpy cry-baby! But why would Christian Grey want to have an S&M relationship with a virgin who is only (barely) consenting to things because she loves him? Why on Earth would she choose an S&M relationship to be her first sexual relationship? Did E.L. James really have to make Anastasia a virgin? (My guess is ‘Yes, because Anastasia is really Bella Swan, and E.L. James has creepily grafted an S&M relationship onto a teenage romance or vice versa’. But hey, that’s just me answering my own question). I know that the first time Christian and Anastasia are together they make love in the ‘normal’ fashion, but they have still entered into an S&M relationship. It doesn’t make Christian Grey a misogynist, it makes him a narcissist who treats women as sex objects, just that his sex is kinkier and more violent than usual. It’s still creepy behaviour, though.

I dunno, this just seemed a bit ‘off’ to me, not to mention absurd, given Grey is open about what he wants from the beginning. Anastasia is a moron. 110 minutes in and she’s still asking Grey (who has already told her he doesn’t ‘do’ relationships) to let her in! Are you an idiot? Five minutes later she’s asking why he would want to punish her. WHAT? You signed the contract an hour ago you moron! He’s using you as a piece of meat. You agreed to it! You shouldn’t have, but you did! He even stated in writing that he wanted to anally fist you, and although you got that stricken from the contract you still decided to enter a relationship with a guy who if he got his way, would like to anally fist you! What’s your problem? And while we’re at it, if you don’t know what a ‘butt plug’ is sweetie, you probably shouldn’t be signing a contract entering into an S&M relationship. Hey, I’m not saying I know what one is, either, but I have no interest in entering into an S&M relationship (And what if Christian were a poor, balding guy who wears board shorts all day, has a Southern accent, a mullet, and no muscles? Yeah. You’d call the cops on him, that’s what). I just had no sympathy for this girl whatsoever, and even less for Christian Grey, who shouldn’t have been doing this with a virgin in the first place.

The sex scenes are pretty explicit for a film made during a relatively chaste time in cinema (the MTV editing style ruins things a bit, though), but after 80 minutes, the kinkiest this thing has gotten is a riding crop being implemented. OK, that one counts as S&M, but still…yawn. The fact that you’ve got Beyoncé and Sia on the soundtrack tells you this was never aiming to be a mature film about the subject. It’s a McProduct, aiming to bring in the widest audience possible (And one assumes the novel’s aims were probably similarly profit-driven). The only decent thing in the entire film as far as I’m concerned was the solid performance by Marcia Gay Harden as Christian’s perfectly pleasant mother. Sadly, no one involved in the film seems to care about her, she’s hardly in it.

Who wants to watch soft S&M? Not me. Who wants to see an S&M relationship between a cold fish underwear model and a mousy virgin? Absolutely not me. The two main characters were completely incompatible and should never have been written to fall in love with one another, it just isn’t plausible. Laughable, questionable, but…mostly just tedious. This movie had no idea how to be what it was trying to be. I didn’t buy the characters or the situation, and most importantly I just didn’t care. But hey, I’m in no way the target audience for this thing. So maybe I’m the one missing out. If you’re into this sort of thing, good for you. I was pretty unimpressed, however. Rant over.

Rating: D+