Review of Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) by Michalina C — 09 Aug 2015

Yes, I had heard the hype around the books. No, I was not interested in seeing the movie. After perusing a couple of pages and slamming the book shut (it really is just cheap erotica), I had hoped that the makers of the film version of "Fifty Shades of Grey" would attempt to improve on the source material. I was hoping it wasn't as bad as people said it was (those people are also not fans of the series). My suspicions were confirmed. "Fifty Shades of Grey" is every bit as awful, frustrating, angering, and unromantic as I thought it would be.

Director Sam-Taylor Johnson (whose teen John Lennon meditation "Nowhere Boy" I enjoyed very much) is able to inject some style into certain scenes with some help from the production design and the director of photography. And on the plus side, the soundtrack is nifty.

However, the movie does not work if you don't have the right people playing these characters, and though Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan are talented, attractive individuals (they definitely look good naked and physically can get through a sex scene passably), they are totally wrong for these parts. There is no chemistry to go along with the heat, however little heat there is. Their discomfort with the material is evident from the beginning. Johnson unintentionally plays up Anastasia's awkwardness and sadly, a lot of the supposedly romantic scenes become funny in a bad way. Jamie Dornan, on the other hand, is not awkward. He unfortunately enhances Christian Grey's creep factor with all of the menace of a psychopathic yuppie out of "American Psycho" and only paints an even worse picture of the character than I already had.

But that's not the actors' fault. The blame really lies on the source material and Kelly Marcel's insufferable script, which comes loaded with cringe-inducing dialogue. "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not romantic in any way. It is not a hot, steamy love story for the modern age. What the filmmakers and the writers refuse to admit is that the interaction between Mr. Grey and Anastasia Steele is ultimately abusive and manipulative. Nobody is in love here. It's one giant S&M fantasy that author E.L. James and screenwriter Marcel should have done more research on.