Movie Review - Fifty Shades of Grey

It’s hard to take Fifty Shades of Grey seriously. What started as effectively Twilight fan fiction became so popular on the Internet that writer E.L James turned it into a best selling novel. 100 million copies later and the story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey has been turned into a feature length film that is sure to divide opinions at the water cooler.

Rather than Edward’s vampire power from Twilight, the source of Christian Grey's influence is money… and lots of it. Grey (Jamie Dornan) is the mysterious owner of Grey Industries who (by plot convenience) happens to be interviewed by almost-university graduate, Anastasia Steele, played by Dakota Johnson. Sexual sparks fly and soon they move from simple dinner dates into the dark and seedy underworld of BDSM fetish, where sex is infused with a dash of domestic abuse and violence.

The 'MacGuffin’ of the film is a contract Christian wants Anastasia to sign. This document essentially lays out the rules of his dominance and her submissiveness, potentially setting feminism back 50 years with a simple flourish of the pen. However, the film is far too long for you to care if she signs it or not.

If, at this point, you are still interested, the plot balances the contract on a fragile seesaw that has Anastasia teetering to overcome her lust for the world’s least-busy billionaire, and an infatuation with his ‘tame me’ aurora makes her want to fix him.

These are 1950s gender stereotypes at best.

From a technical point of view, kudos to the editor of this film, who managed to cut away every single time you think you’re about to see a rudey bit. The same goes for the cinematographer, as his composition and lighting were actually more interesting to look at then the tame sex scenes. Sadly vanilla in a story filled with fetish and primed for eroticism, the physical interludes were simply tailored for the masses and struggled to even register as soft-core. Baffling, really... What other reason is there to see this movie?

Regardless, this film will make money for lots of reasons - mostly the massive hysteria this naughty book brought to the world in 2012. Simple curiosity will sell a lot of tickets, and a few bums will land on seats purely through boredom. This all means it will probably get the sequel films in the same vein as the books, but honestly it shouldn’t.

So what does that leave us? Well, you can’t even distill Fifty Shades of Grey down to five shades of awful - instead it’s very black and white:

1. We’ve got a horridly cliché filled script featuring the hugely unlikable character of Christian Grey, and
2. The subject matter and subsequent ‘titillation’ is not enough to hold a film that stretches on without a three-act structure

I get this fantasy scenario and that it has its appeal. The divide will come from between one audience who sees it as a story of sexual exploration they will never experience in their own lives, and another that will see this as a disgrace to gender equality.

Put me in Column B. Any man gets his rocks off by physically assaulting and hurting a woman isn’t worth celebrating.