Fifty Shades of Grey Reviews

Hopefully, as a heterosexual female student in her twenties with a love of film that spreads across all genres and decades, this will come over as a fair assessment of a film that genuinely did nothing for me.

Have not read the books, though have heard conflicting opinions that has mostly been intense dislike. The reason for watching 'Fifty Shades of Grey' was not due to wanting to hate on it, being a negative person, curiosity but for the reason of being at a film night with friends recently and 'Fifty Shades of Grey' happened to be the film choice. Just for the record, the general consensus ranged from indifference to hating it with a passion.

There are two minor pros. The best thing about 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is most of the beguiling soundtrack, that has a soothing nostalgia and appropriately amorous quality, this is all for the song choices though. 'Fifty Shades of Grey' also looks good, nice use of scenery and very nicely shot.

On the other hand, Danny Elfman's score is one-note and repetitive, as well as too derivative of his recent work. He has composed some wonderful stuff ('Edward Scissorhands' is magical) but this is really not his best work. The direction has slickness but overall is too mannered which really affects the film's tone and pacing.

Regarding the acting, none of the supporting cast are of note, including Marcia Gay Harden, but a larger issue is the two leads and their complete lack of chemistry. Understated can be a lovely quality to acting, as long as it also becomes nuanced and with believability given to the dialogue. Dakota Johnson, especially in the first third, is too understated that it feels more like there is a lack of personality or emotion. Jamie Dornan looks uncomfortable throughout, delivers his cringe-worthy lines awkwardly and is just bland as dishwater with no charisma whatsoever. Chemistry is non-existent.

'Fifty Shades of Grey's' dialogue does them absolutely no favours, dialogue so bad that absolutely nobody (even the best actors and actresses) can do anything with it. It causes unintentional laughter throughout, is embarrassingly clunky and is pure smut. Then there is the story that is so thin structurally, heavy in repetition, so badly plodding and without style or atmosphere that the film feels twice as long, with the sexual elements done far too tamely and the BDSM portrayal deceitful. None of the characters are engaging or interesting, practically ciphers.

All in all, a very poor film with two minor pros and the rest of the film massively flawed. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Remember when everybody was talking about the book Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James? Do you also remember the equally terrible movie adaptation on Valentine’s Day weekend in 2015? The story of Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and her sadomasochistic relationship with young businessman Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) has been the most entertainingly awful piece of literature and a subject of parody in the first half of the 2010 decade. What made the novel so infamous were the exaggerated sex scenes and the laughable internal monologue. The movie however, trims those elements down in favor of a conventional romantic drama instead of raising the bar with James’s text. Don’t get me wrong, Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t without saucy moments, but there are so few drips to squeeze and they get bogged down by scenes of Mr. Grey gawking Anastasia with materialism, stalking her at dinner parties, or sending creepy text messages. Christian has an entire collection of whips, butt plugs, and other BDSM sex toys, yet he never takes advantage of them in the movie. With the funny narration being replaced by generic pop songs, the film also loses its charisma and never explores Annie’s lustful desires. I’m not asking for this movie to be ultra-pornographic, but I expected more steamy activity than just hard spanking and rubbing ice on the nipples. Despite Sam Taylor-Johnson’s effort to better the book’s prose, the result of Fifty Shades of Grey is extremely mild and not the least bit titillating.

(1 ½ Exploding Inner Goddesses out of 5)

Initial Thought: I really had no care in the world to see this. It was at my theater for awhile and I just could not do it. It's Twilight all over again just trying to not be copyright. The names were changed as well as the setting, but the scenario is pretty much basically the same. He is something different and strange. She wants to be a part of it even though she has no idea what she is really in for. The acting doesn't even look they tried whatsoever and that's just from the trailer. I walked in a few times while cleaning theaters and some scenes were just plain awful. Well I am going to grin and bear it. Funny thing is the recent episode of Gotham and Vikings has BDSM in them. One acted upon it slightly while the other hinted at it. Well looks like entertainment has it all haha. It's time to sit through this and actual share my opinion on the full of the movie.

Characters/Acting: As of the trailer and the scenes I saw the acting is quite a mess. I have never seen anything with Jamie Dornan in it before, but I hope his other roles are better than this. Dakota Johnson has been decent in most things I've seen of her and she does have a bit more emotion than Kristen Stewart. I'm not a big fan of Marcia Gay Harden as she usually plays some of the most obnoxious characters in my opinion. Rita Ora is here which I like because I find her quite interesting. I wish her role had been bigger, but she is already cast for the next two so we shall see. The way Christian and Anastasia interact just feels so awkward and forced to me. Christian is such a self-centered guy that it kind of makes me chuckle with the way he says things about his behavior. There are a few moments of good acting between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, but most of it is jumbled by a bad script. I am glad that they had much more emotion than Edward and Bella. All the supporting actors here actually did pretty well though to my surprise. I think they really tried.

Story: It's Twilight with different names and scenario. I hated the Twilight series. Instead of vampires (well fairies that drink blood because I refuse to think of Twilight as anything but) we deal with BDSM and even more pathetic decisions. As I'm watching this I understand this clearly isn't a love story it's more about infatuation. How often does love actually come from situations this strange? Of course it's just a movie based off a fiction book so there is no reality here. If someone makes you sign paperwork to be in a "relationship" of sorts then you probably wouldn't react as if it's normal. Some things here I just think are so far-fetched. It surprisingly takes almost an hour before things get truly intimate. I wasn't expecting it to take that long. Once the heat starts the fire stays pretty hot. Now I am near to the end which is most of what I saw before and it's probably the worst stuff in the entire movie. I really didn't want to sit through it again, but it was too near the end to just skip past it. One thing I really hated was the fact she asks him to do it and when he does she hates him for it. I mean you got what you asked for. You sat through it the whole way and then got upset. It was just so ridiculous to me! I must have watched the new ending because where it ended in theaters it has extra stuff after. Mostly it's flashbacks from earlier scenes. It doesn't do much except kind of reflect how the characters are feeling.

Directing/Writing: Well this is a fan fiction of Twilight. E.L. James just changed all the names to avoid getting into any legal issues. Even worse is the fact that someone actually dared to make a horrible movie of a fan fiction based on a book series that spawned horrible movies. Now I never read the Twilight books so I can't say if they are good or bad. They might be much better than the movies, but I just could not get past sparkling "vampires". The screenwriter here wrote Saving Mr. Banks! Are you kidding me? Why would someone who can actually write a movie set to work on this travesty. The director here I actually enjoyed her work with Nowhere Boy. Her little PSA with James Bond was kind of interesting to watch. The dialogue is so cringe-worthy that it truly feels like the source material it started as.

Final Thought: One of the lines in this movie is literally "I'm fifty shades of fucked up!" Come on that is really cheesy and they tried to make it such a serious scene. It had a few decent moments, but most of it was kind of dull. The supporting actors did an excellent job. It was actually better than Twilight to be honest. I can't believe I just said that. Anyways it's not as awful as I had expected it to be, but it was still pretty bad. I will still probably see the sequels because I'm crazy. Who knows maybe they will improve.

If you have not heard of Fifty Shades of Grey and the hype (negative or positive) surrounding that cultural phenomenon, you must have been living on the moon for quite some time. Based on the best-selling novels by author E. L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey have been described as being simple mommy-porn, with a target audience of almost strictly women. This is a film that's clearly attempting to sweep over the Twilight crowd, which is unsurprising as the books actually started out as being Twilight fan-fiction. And it looks like they're succeeding with that. It's destroying the box office at the moment. But not without its cost. The film is currently getting a lot of criticism and even hatred. Standing at the moment with a very harsh 3.9/10 rating at IMDb, with almost 50% of the votes being a 1, it's safe to say that people are not reacting positively towards this adaptation. Add that some people are attacking it, claiming that it glorifies domestic abuse and you've got a film with a huge amount of backlash. And what is my statement towards this? What is my reaction on Fifty Shades of Grey? Well. Let's put it this way. The IMDb rating is a joke. That it glorifies abuse towards women is bullshit. And Fifty Shades of Grey is actually a fine film that completely outshines its ludicrous source material. I liked it.

Before I proceed on to talking about the film itself, I really believe that I ought to address the insanity of its IMDb rating. It's as I've said at 3.9 at the moment. Days prior to its release it was as low as 3.2. People, mostly male, went on a rampage, giving it a 1 without having seen the film. Naturally it was countered by some people giving it a 10, but seeing as it went as low as 3.2, there's no doubt about who was the most dominant. This is absolutely ridiculous. If there ever was any doubt about the flaws of these rating systems before, you can absolutely confirm it now. Luckily, it's being changing more rationally now, as people are seeing the film, but that people are bringing this film down without seeing it is pathetic. It's pathetic that people are hating on a film they haven't seen just because of the hype surround it. It's despicable that people are hating on the hard work of others without giving it a chance first. I've previously defended the Twilight films for being a result of people's hatred being overly exaggerated because it's the cool thing to do. Now it looks like it's happening again with Fifty Shades of Grey. It's perfectly fine to dislike a film after seeing it, but going around trashing something just because it's cool (and without seeing it) is ridiculous and it lowers the standard of the human race, and our cultural understanding much more than any of these films. Anyway, there are being made far worse films than this every week, and Fifty Shades of Grey is being judged unfairly because of its hype.




Now, on to the film itself. It's a solid film that's actually quite a lot of fun. Much of it comes from it's own self-awareness. They know that they're adapting a book that's not exactly great literature, and they do have fun with it. I honestly don't think there's any comedic moment in this film that is unintentional. And that the filmmakers have managed to spin the huge flaws from the source material in to a strength is a great feat. I laughed a lot. I found myself, almost, constantly smiling at what was happening on the screen. It's a great romantic comedy. With an extra pressure on the word comedy. There are many great jokes here, and the ridiculousness of some of the scenes just adds an extra layer to it.

But Fifty Shades of Grey is mostly about the sex, and the relationship (or non-relationship) that the two lead characters have. I will say that I did find the sex to be a slightly bit tamer than what I was expecting, and that it wasn't as rough or controversial as one would guess. But I will say that I actually thought most of it was pretty well-handled. There's naturally a lot of nudity here, some spanking, some whips and ropes and a whole lot of kissing and touching. It's not as steamy as one would have hoped for, but instead it feels much more intimate. There's just one that I thought was a bit unsettling, and that was because the plot demanded it to be so, which worked well. So I actually liked most of the sex scenes because of their intimacy and that they were more focused around the character's pleasure and enjoyment as opposed to just showing hardcore BDSM sex. The scenes that are steamy and sexy, if you will, are some of the scenes that doesn't involve them actually having sex.



The greatest part of this film is Dakota Johnson. She's a catch. Not only is she absolutely gorgeous, but she plays her character with brilliancy as well. She perfectly manages to capture the awkwardness, insecurity and humour of Anastasia Steele. She's also extremely sexy when she needs to be. Jamie Dornan, on the other hand, is not as great. He's perfectly serviceable, and I can imagine that he will cause a lot of women to faint, but I didn't find him to have that commanding and intimidating presence that his character should have. His chemistry between Dakota Johnson is also a bit off sometimes, while it's great on some occasions. They certainly work best together whenever they're focused on the sex, or talking about it. Whenever they try to delve into Christian Grey's psychology, I think it's a bit more off.

It does of course leave everything open for the sequel, and the film doesn't come with a particular conclusion of its own. But as a simple cliffhanger, I think the ending worked fine enough. And I'm going to see the next one, quite simply because I liked this film. I thought it was funny, intimate, occasionally sexy and I thought Dakota Johnson was outstanding. But above all, it was hugely entertaining. Sure, it's a very flawed film. The sex scenes may be a bit disappointing, Jamie Dornan is a bit weak and the psychology of Christian Grey is a bit poorly handled. But this is a film that knew what it was based on, and it had fun with that. And so did I. And I'll be damned if some stupid hype is going to take that away from me.