Movie Review: Fifty Shades of Grey

First and foremost, I have never read E.L. James books series that the first film is based off of; my little knowledge of the series is that it was originally a fan fiction of Twilight. I saw Fifty Shades of Grey this past week out of sure curiosity.

After seeing what seemed like an endless barrage of “don’t go see this film” or “if you support Fifty Shades of Grey you’re supporting domestic violence,” I was more curious than ever to see what exactly happened in this film. I wish my curiosity would have ended there, but alas it did not.

I should have taken the fact that it was originally a Twilight fan fiction deter me from seeing what was quite possibly one of the worst films I have seen, Twilight obviously stealing the first spot. I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to this film, so I will start first with the scripting.

A friend of mine told me after the fact that it only took the cast five days to learn all of their lines. Five days. In five days the entire cast was off book, indicator number one that script wasn’t going to be academy worthy. My second indicator should have been that not only was it fan fiction, and Twilight isn’t known for its riveting script and story. Throughout the entire movie Ana and Christian communicate via instant messaging, and I am actually sure that they talked more through messaging than they did in person. In the terms of character development, I felt as if the script did no gradual development, and then suddenly it was time for all of the characters to radically change, and then they rolled the credits. Overall, I would give the script a F.

As for the acting in the movie, I had heard some positive feedback about Dakota Johnson’s overall performance. The breakout actress did well with what she had to work with. I already covered that the script was severely lacking all around, it was incredible that she could develop what she did, from a character based off of Bella Swan, Kristen Stewart gave it her best go too. As for Jamie Dornan, well he did the best he could for the brooding and controlling CEO billionaire Christian Grey.  However, as for the two of them together, I did not get behind the actors together. There was absolutely no chemistry among the characters. I did not feel at any point that he was really attracted to her, or that the few times they engaged in intimate sex that it was really something that was any good for either one of them.

Due to their lack of chemistry, this pretty much led to every sex scene between the two actors to be a major disappointment. For two characters with romantic interest in each other, their sex scenes felt as clunky and awkward as losing your virginity in the backseat of car at the high school prom.  Everyone who went to see Fifty Shades of Grey went to see some steamy scenes between the two main characters, and boy were we all let down. I’ve seen sexier moments in PG-13 films.

And as for those blowing the domestic abuse whistle, while I agree that her personal relationship with Christian Grey isn’t a healthy one, there is an entire contract scene in which all of Christian’s desires are laid out, and he accepts when Ana denies several of them. As for the relationship, Christian is pretty upfront about the type of man he is, and what he wants from the relationship. Again, is it healthy, no, but Ana was pretty well informed that it wasn’t going to be healthy beforehand. I remember a certain vampire romance aimed at young people carrying pretty much the same relationship tropes and people accepting it with pretty open arms.

There were no redeeming aspects of the film for me, expect maybe trying to figure out how Ana kept her flip phone for so long. It wasn’t well scripted, very well acted, or in the least bit sexy. The film originally planned for NC-17 rating was turned down by the studio in the hopes that more people would be seeing the film. If you’re under 17 this film isn’t for you anyways, not that it’s really good enough for anyone. Don’t waste your time; there are much sexier films with a story out there.