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Fifty Shades of Grey Reviews

Here's a film that is offensive only in how inoffensive it proves to be.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 11, 2022

Feels like an elegantly made - the cinematography and score are top notch - night time soap opera.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 2, 2021

At least, the film goes out of the way to show the use of condoms.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Dec 4, 2020

If this is love, no thanks.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4.0 | Sep 7, 2020

In terms of story and character, this film is in desperate need of a safe word.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 16, 2020

Overlong, too clinical in design, and based on lowest common denominator entertainment (or so I'm told), Fifty Shades of Grey still manages to be engaging, funny, and unexpectedly human.

Full Review | Apr 10, 2020

Given that this is her second film, [Sam] Taylor-Johnson directs the film with taste and care by focusing on the interactions between Ana and Christian rather than the sexual side of the story and the film looks stunning.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 26, 2019

Fifty Shades of Grey will draw you in out of curiosity and possibly hopes of a good movie, then leave you wondering why you agreed to such a thing in the first place, much like the main character.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.9/10 | Nov 12, 2019

Funny that no one seemed to understand in the making of Grey that watching two vaguely defined characters engage in ceaseless rounds of conservatively filmed grimaces and stifled moans gets tiresome quickly.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 19, 2019

There is little more critical than to say a third of the film had people laughing at dialogue, and the other two thirds wiggling in their seats, not from discomfort or innervation, but from boredom.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 2, 2019

You've seen worse; you've imagined better.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 17, 2019

Nice as it looks, this movie tastes bad...

Full Review | May 16, 2019

Most of the actual sex has less erotic value than what can be found on late night HBO, and it certainly doesn't hold a candle to the graphic content of the novels or the erotic-charged hype surrounding the film.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | May 10, 2019

You would've put the book down after reading the character's name on the third page: Anastasia Steele? Puh-lease!

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 17, 2019

[General audiences] might need to be handcuffed to their seats and wonder how something so wildly popular could be so stiflingly unerotic.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 4, 2019

Every fiber of my being is screaming at her to send this man packing.

Full Review | Feb 5, 2019

The dialogue is terrible and Dornan's Grey is so humourless that any vaguely funny lines fall utterly flat. On the plus side Johnson does her best with what she's been given, Ana is a Thomas Hardy fan, and Grey has a nice kitchen.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Nov 10, 2018

The entire palate of the film was cool and gray, which doesn't do much to incite passion. and I don't think we should blame the actors.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2018

Fifty Shades of Grey is that hot date you bring home to discover (s)he's a cold fish between the sheets.

This is worth going to the cinema for, leave your expectations behind and relax and enjoy a visually beautiful film.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2018

Cast & crew
User reviews

Fifty Shades of Grey

Literature student Anastasia Steele's life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey. Literature student Anastasia Steele's life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey. Literature student Anastasia Steele's life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey.

Sam Taylor-Johnson
Kelly Marcel
Dakota Johnson
Jamie Dornan
Jennifer Ehle
1.6K User reviews
368 Critic reviews
46 Metascore
9 wins & 30 nominations total

Anastasia Steele

Christian Grey

Elliot Grey

Paul Clayton

Mr. Clayton

WSU University President
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia Remote controlled cameras were utilized for a majority of the sex scenes so the set could be more private for the actors, though stunt coordinator Melissa R. Stubbs said in an interview that in some of the wilder scenes, the two lead actors had to spend hours naked in front of a full crew.
Goofs When Kate looks on the web for pictures of Christian Grey, you can see 2 of him that are taken from scenes that happen further on in the film. Christian in the coffee shop and him in Clayton's Hardware Store.

Christian Grey : [answers phone] Anastasia.

Anastasia Steele : Yeah, this is me. I'm sending back your expensive books because I already have copies of those. Thanks though for the kind gesture.

Christian Grey : You're welcome. Where are you?

Anastasia Steele : Oh, I'm in line because I have to pee really bad.

Christian Grey : Anastasia, have you been drinking?

Anastasia Steele : [laughs] Yeah! I have, Mr. Fancy Pants. You hit... you hit the hail on the nead. I mean the head right on the nail.

Christian Grey : Listen to me. I want you to go home right now.

Anastasia Steele : You're so bossy! Ana, let's go for a coffee. No, stay away from me Ana! I don't want you! Get away. Come here, come here! Go away!

Christian Grey : That's it. Tell me where you are.

Anastasia Steele : A long way from Seattle! A long way from you.

Christian Grey : Which bar? What's it called?

Anastasia Steele : I don't know. I gotta go, though.

Christian Grey : Which bar Ana?

Anastasia Steele : [to girl in line] I told him. Right?

Alternate versions 3 minutes and 14 seconds were cut from the R-rated version and released as a Blu-ray exclusive edition that includes longer sex scenes.
Connections Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: Morgan Freeman/Kesha/Tweedy (2014)
Soundtracks I Put a Spell on You (Shades of Grey Version) Written by Screamin' Jay Hawkins (as Jay Hawkins) Performed by Annie Lennox Additional string arrangement by Danny Elfman Courtesy of Blue Note Records and Island Records Ltd. Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 1.6K

gangstah_vino
Feb 10, 2015
How long is Fifty Shades of Grey? Powered by Alexa
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February 13, 2015 (United States)
United States
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50 Shades of Grey
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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$40,000,000 (estimated)
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$85,171,450
Feb 15, 2015
$569,651,467

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Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes
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Review: Fifty Shades of Grey : Where’s the Wicked Whiplash?

I come as a virgin to the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, having read not a word of E L James’ three bestsellers — ignorant of the voluminous online commentaries, knowing little of the movie adaptation. So I take notes, like Washington State University student Anastasia Steele, and share them with you.

Here are 15 takes on Fifty Shades:

1. Anastasia (Dakota Johnson in the movie) literally stumbles into a meeting with Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), 27-year-old owner of a huge Seattle IT company to which he pays almost no attention, since he is instantly obsessed with the frazzled, unconfident, we-won’t-say-mousy Anastasia. Smitten, he proposes that she be his sex slave — under stringent, lavish conditions. She takes the first book to consider his proposal and the rest of the trilogy to … well, you probably know. I don’t. Anyway, there are three.

2. A hundred million copies sold! And apparently it’s the lowest form of prose fiction — less literature than shiterature — with the enticement of gaudy bondage-and-discipline scenes. Inspired by the young adult Twilight series, James wrote for Actual Adults: women, mostly, to whose wishes, feats and dreams the risky romance of Ana and Christian spoke.

3. The Fifty Shades of Grey film opens in a double-whammy four days — Valentine’s Day in the middle of Presidents’ Day weekend — and is expected to stoke a $90-million windfall. For some, it’s a hearts-and-floggers date movie: A couple attends the movie, then he asks, “Dinner or my Red Room of Pain?” And mothers in the mall, they’ll tell their kids to go back and see the SpongeBob SquarePants movie another time-and-a-half. “Mom has some shopping to do” — for fantasies of romance and submission, whips and wisdom.

4. Among the early reviews, the critics are split between favorable and dismissive. And not to bury the lede any deeper, I’ll say while watching Fifty Shades I kept waiting to tumble into derision but never got there. My early curiosity built to a cozy level of admiration, then drifted off into ennui.

5. James (real name: Erika Mitchell) tweaked the Twilight teen virgin Bella Swan into the slightly older Anastasia, and reimagined sensitive vampire Edward as the well-mannered sadist Christian. The result had all the fidelity and floridity of fan fiction. The movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and scripted by Kelly Marcel, is just the opposite. It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t care much for the book’s literary lapses and dramatic excesses, and set out to make a solidly ethereal romance about a smart girl who realizes her strength when she meets a lost boy eager to fill her power vacuum.

6. Gone is James’s careless jargon; Anastasia doesn’t keep saying “Holy crap!” Diminished, degraded or simply hinted at are The Big Scenes. Johnson and Dornan spend plenty of time undressed (she fully nude, he topless but rarely trouserless or towelless); there are spankings and just a soupçon of wicked whiplash. But the lovemaking is mostly tender, canoodling, cuddling. It’s all foreplay. Creating a genteel R-rated film from a very X-rated book is like making a Mamma Mia! movie without the songs.

7. Sadomasochistic romance ought to be a burgeoning movie genre, because it touches on the power vectors in any relationship, and because each person frequently switches roles of dominant and submissive: you’re on top, you give in. Once in a while such a story connects becomes a film sensation, as when Marlon Brando toyed with Maria Schneider in an unfurnished Paris hotel room in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris . Mark Rylance took the Brando role, and Kerry Fox the Schneider, in the more sexually explicit art-house drama Intimacy in 2001.

8. Last Tango was so long ago, 1972. Back then, films strove mightily to be as mature and confrontational as novels and theater; and a movie house was the only place that a group of strangers could find public connection to erotic ecstasy and anguish. Shortly thereafter ( Star Wars ), cinema reverted to a kids’ medium and trained audiences to want only spectacle and sensation: action epics, horror films, rowdy comedies — circuses. Let’s go Wow, Eek or Ha together. Watching people make love is not participatory but nakedly voyeuristic; everyone in the auditorium feels weird. They laugh nervously or contemptuously, to prove their superiority to the urgent intensity on screen. Besides, they don’t need simulated sex in a theater; they can see the real thing for free, online at home.

9. But the E L James readership presumably wanted to see writhing, walloped bodies in the movie. Why is it rated R, not NC-17? For the reason most things are what they are in Hollywood: greed. Many theaters would not show a scrupulous adaptation; fewer people would pay to see it. Hence this Fifty Shades of Pale Grey , which underlines the filmmakers’ intuition that this is less a sex tale than a love story.

10. Or possibly a commodity exchange. Christian, a dreamboat in conservative coiffure and couture, is a 50-year dreamboat throwback: a generic James Bond, or Hugh Hefner’s early Playboy man , whose essential accessories included sleek cars, well-chosen wines and a stock of beautiful women. Christian tries to win Anastasia by buying her things (a car, a new wardrobe) and paying her things (attention, respect). He takes her for a trip in his private helicopter, first applying seat belts like airborne erotic restraints, and somersaulting in a glider. It’s a seductive dream of luxe, but maybe more his than hers. She will let her mind lead her heart, in a long, amusing debate in contract law: the terms of Christian’s pre- whup . Anastasia gives it so much scrupulous attention — no fisting, for example — that any signer of a smartphone or health-club agreement would be wise to engage her as an advisor.

11. Ideally, sadomasochism is the most complementary of sexual role-players. You can’t have one without the other. Otherwise, it’s torture. (That’s what safe words are for.) Christian, veteran of 15 previous dominant-submissive relationships, has chosen Anastasia as his next partner. But she needs to decide if pain can give her pleasure. Does she like it? Can she stand it, for love of him? Can she upend his priorities and make herself the dominant? The 514 pages of the first Fifty Shade s book, and the two-hour movie, still haven’t answered that question. Stay tuned for two more sequels.

12. In Christian’s “playroom,” decorated like the upmarket gift shop of a Louisiana bordello, we finally get to the climax: six whacks of a riding crop, which he gently, carefully prepares her for. Even by movie standards, the flogging is more ceremonial than sadistic. It hasn’t nearly the sickening impact of the 40 lashes given Mel Gibson’s Jesus in The Passion of the Christ , or the eight or 10 minutes spent on the torture of poor Patsey in 12 Years a Slave . The Fifty Shades scene is brief and demure. One might like to see the impact of Christian’s whipping on Ana’s emotions: perhaps pain shading into surprised enjoyment, or hardening into the resolve of revenge. But that’s for some other movie. Don’t we all dream up our private ones?

13. So Christian is a shade of Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy. Dornan, 32 and Irish, is old-school handsome with soft features. He could be the young Colin Firth, minus the sad merriment in his eyes. (For film-history symmetry, Jennifer Ehle, who was Elizabeth Bennet to Firth’s Darcy in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries, plays Anastasia’s blowzy mother.) The producers first hoped to cast Ryan Gosling, but he would have made Christian sulkier, more brooding, more Heathcliff. Manacles on the moors!

14. The movie’s warming revelation is Johnson as Anastasia. The 25-year-old daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson (and looking like neither of them), she has the gift of signaling her character’s shifting thoughts and feelings through the ripples of smile lines on either side of her mouth. Director Taylor-Johnson relies on closeups of her star as the heroine, the wordless narrator and the go-between, assuring the audience that what goes on will have a measure of emotional intelligence.

15. Having built tension by nicely guiding viewers smoothly through Christian’s courtship of Ana, Taylor-Johnson has little to deliver as a climax, erotic or dramatic. The submissive gets cropped, doesn’t like it and walks out, in an ending that is startlingly abrupt — and, to one impressionable audience of New York critics, the cue for a thunderclap of pig-snorts. The real moviegoers who see it by the tens of millions this weekend may have a reaction more like mine: muted, pleased and restless in turn. We’ll all have participated in an international event that, like the Super Bowl, needn’t be loved but must be endured. And in a movie universe where a grownup couple rarely gets the chance to challenge each other with love and bondage, Fifty Shades of Grey offers the first can’t-miss Date Night film since Gone Girl .

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‘fifty shades of grey’: film review.

Bondage stakes its claim on the multiplex as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele transition steamily from best-seller to the big screen.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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As the tens of millions of readers of Fifty Shades of Grey know, Christian Grey doesn’t do hearts and flowers. The long-fingered antihero of E L James’ 2011 novel is a sexual dominant, practiced and resolute, determined to make Anastasia Steele his submissive without giving her the dreaded “more” — i.e., the dinner-date trappings of conventional romance. Both on the page and in the glossy, compellingly acted screen adaptation, one of the more perverse aspects of their zeitgeist-harnessing story is the breathless way it melds the erotic kink known as BDSM with female wish-fulfillment fantasy of a decidedly retro slant. Hearts and flowers are barely concealed beneath the pornographic surface, and as with most mainstream love stories, an infatuated but commitment-averse male is in need of rehabilitation.

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Fifty Shades of Grey Review: Dakota Johnson Is Superb; Jamie Dornan, Not So Much

The eagerly awaited/dreaded film adaptation of the best-selling BDSM romance Fifty Shades of Grey is nowhere near as laughable as you might have feared (or perversely hoped for): It’s elegantly made, and Dakota Johnson is so good at navigating the heroine’s emotional zigs and zags that you want to buy into the whole cobwebbed premise. The movie’s biggest surprise is its powerful affirmation of family values. It’s Jane Eyre with ropes. That this vanilla bean has been denounced by religious decency brigades while female churchgoers pleasure themselves over advance tickets is further proof of America’s insane cultural bifurcation — or trifurcation, if you count the worriers who predict that women’s shelters will have to add more beds to accommodate battered copycats. Are there really people who still think that watching a man tie up a woman and both of them get off is the gateway to hell?

Not being a masochist, I couldn’t bring myself until recently to read the first book in E.L. James’s trilogy, which began (and should have ended) as fan fiction. A few pages was all it took to grasp that the shy, virginal narrator-heroine, Anastasia Steele, needed to be liberated from her mousy introversion, and the sleek, chill billionaire Christian Grey from his anger toward women — one hopes by the love of an independent lass willing to meet his demand for submission partway (but only partway). Anastasia and Christian are literally made to rescue each other.

The setup is not, dramatically speaking, virgin territory. A successful male control freak who’s compelled by an emotionally pure woman to open himself up is the basis for thousands of romances and is far less disturbing in its implications than, say, Pretty Woman , that launching pad for American Sweetheart Julia Roberts in which the prince purchases his princess on the open market. Here, the characters’ names say it all: A vulnerable princess with a core of steel(e) meets a morally gray prince who is first and foremost Christian.

Not-untalented, not-unsophisticated people have swallowed hard and labored to make these clichés seem fresh. It couldn’t have been easy. Johnson’s Anastasia begins as a bookish ingenue with slumping shoulders and bangs that hang limply over her cast-down eyes. Having been enlisted by her flu-ridden journalist roommate to come to her rescue by interviewing the forbidding Mr. Grey, Anastasia is ushered into a high-in-the-skyscraper office by a tall, crisp blonde in an expensive suit. Seeing Grey, she gets tingly all over. He is not merely Master of the Universe but an Adonis to boot.

Theoretically, at least. Jamie Dornan, a last-minute replacement after Charlie Hunnam left so fast that the revolving door must have flapped for days, cuts a less commanding figure than you’d hope, so the first look between Anastasia and Grey is a nonevent. With his fluffed-up hair and pert, pretty little face, Dornan’s Grey looks more like a natural bottom than a top. He’s a bantamweight. Although I did grow to appreciate his modest, unshowy acting, it’s clear he’s not sending much heat her way and that she’s having to work herself up in a vacuum — at a cost to her psyche, judging from her glassy, PTSD demeanor in television interviews.

Whatever she went through, Johnson is superb. The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, she resembles neither one. Her gift (which her mother had before all the shtick and plastic surgery) is for achieving emotional transparency while looking nothing like a trained actress. But the craft is there. Johnson doesn’t so much speak her lines as float them, removing the sharp notes so that Anastasia can seem both intelligent and strangely unassertive — the sort of smart, unformed woman who’d be irresistible to a man with a compulsion to dominate.

The most original and entertaining parts of Fifty Shades of Grey are the pre-coital negotiations. Christian hands Anastasia a long contract, the details of which have been hammered out by the kind of lawyers that you and I will never be able to afford; and Anastasia strikes out clauses and then announces after all the niggling that she needs to go home and think a bit more. Her non-surrender is the key to movie’s dramatic tension but also, alas, its libido-killing pace. My God, this thing goes on. By the time the two get busy in Christian’s “playroom,” the oomph has gone out of the whole erotic setup, the focus having shifted to the happiness of Grey’s mom (Marcia Gay Harden) at finally being allowed to meet one of Christian’s girlfriends as well as Christian’s decision to do what he never does with a submissive: take her on a “real date.”

How you respond to those “playroom” scenes will depend on many factors, from your gender to your sexual predilections to the depth of your experience. Anyone who has dabbled even casually in S&M will find Fifty Shades of Grey cruelly mild, though a few might get off on knowing that in the theater next door the kiddies are watching SpongeBob . Given the preponderance of female nudity and absence of pickle shots, we hetero males probably get the better deal — which is too bad, given that the director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, is a woman and ought to have a more female-centric perspective. It’s not that she employs the usual prurient male gaze. It’s that her own gaze is as nervous as her heroine’s. She seems shackled (so to speak) by the movie’s takeaway: that even mindful, ultraregulated BDSM isn’t for normal people but emotional basket-cases — damned souls — who need to hide behind prescribed roles and rituals.

This is not, in other words, a film for those who believe that an interest in dominance and submission is — as long as no one gets seriously hurt — healthy. It’s for people who are titillated by BDSM but feel ashamed of themselves (or, our culture being singularly screwed-up, are titillated by feeling ashamed of themselves). Cocky, confident Christian is actually in hell. When, for the sake of healing him, Anastasia pleads with him to show her what he really wants to do, his predictable demonstration sends her reeling, retching, weeping into his private elevator. What did she expect?

Perhaps James finds a middle ground in parts two and three of the Fifty Shades of Grey “trilogy,” which will be made into movies assuming Johnson can be induced to put up with Dornan two more times. (Sadists might find the actress’s evident pain more exciting than the character’s.) Meanwhile, newscasters and talk-show hosts will squirm through discussions of BDSM with the knowledge that hordes of churchgoers are massing at the doors, everyone reliably missing the point: that in a country where almost every movie features a hero racking up serial-killer-worthy body counts, it’s a little slap and tickle that draws the most blood.

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Fifty Shades Of Grey, movie review: Jamie Dornan’s Christian is like a Chippendale dancer

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Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan as Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey

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For all the genius with which it has been marketed and distributed, the film adaptation of Fifty Shades Of Grey turns out to be anti-climactic on almost every level.

Shot in a glossy style reminiscent of 80s bratpack movies, as if it’s an S&M version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , it isn’t funny or ironic enough to work as a guilty treat for a hen night audience.

It doesn’t pass muster as a romantic drama either. Nor does it have the psychological intensity of a Last Tango In Paris .

Sam Taylor-Johnson fails to put any personal stamp on the film. Her heavy handed use of music gives us the impression at times that we’re watching a glorified pop promo on MTV.

The “18” certificate liberates her to push beyond usual Hollywood norms in her portrayal of the goings-on in the “Red Room,” but she is also trying to make a mainstream movie.

Fifty Shades of Grey film stills

The characterisation is flimsy in the extreme. Jamie Dornan’s Christian Grey, the reclusive billionaire with the “singular” tastes, is like a cross between Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre and a Chippendale dancer.

Dakota Johnson’s Anastasia is equally one-dimensional - the Thomas Hardy-loving English Literature student who works part time in a hardware store. They’re both such cartoonish creations that when the filmmakers try to hint at their anxieties and deeper feelings (Christian’s troubled childhood for example), the results are laughable.

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Fifty Shades of Grey

Where to Watch

Dakota Johnson (Anastasia Steele) Jamie Dornan (Christian Grey) Jennifer Ehle (Carla) Eloise Mumford (Kate) Victor Rasuk (José) Luke Grimes (Elliot Grey) Marcia Gay Harden (Dr. Grey) Rita Ora (Mia Grey) Max Martini (Taylor) Callum Keith Rennie (Ray)

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Literature student Anastasia Steele's life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey.

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No Pain, No Gain

By Anthony Lane

Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in Sam TaylorJohnsons adaptation of the novel.

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here.

Nothing has exercised the novel’s devotees—the Jamesians, as we must think of them—quite as much as the proper occupants of the central roles. Who could conceivably play Christian Grey, the awkward young billionaire with the extensive neckwear collection, let alone Anastasia Steele, the English-lit major who is also, as we gasp to learn, one of the leading virgins of Vancouver, Washington? Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Good choices, I reckon, especially Johnson, who, as the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, knows everything about predators who stare and swoop.

Ana, as she is usually called, first meets Christian Grey at Grey House, which is home to Grey Enterprises, in Seattle. (Don’t you adore rich men who hide themselves away?) She is there in lieu of her roommate, who was meant to interview Grey for the college newspaper but has fallen sick. Ana, ushered into his presence, stumbles first over the threshold and then over her words, but begins to melt as he expounds on his bountiful gifts. “I’ve always been good at people,” he says, as though people were Scrabble or squash. He is interested in “what motivates them—what incentivizes them.” Any woman should run a mile from a man who uses the verb “incentivize,” but things could have been worse, I guess. He could have said “monetize.” He also lends her a pencil, bearing the word “Grey,” the tip of which she rubs against her lip. Either she has a cold sore or these folks are getting ready to rumble.

Their next encounter comes at a hardware store, where Christian is stocking up on masking tape, cable ties, and rope. “You’re the complete serial killer,” Ana says. Now, there’s a thought. We know Ana reads Jane Austen, and here, for a second, she sounds like the heroine of “Northanger Abbey,” who is mocked for always assuming the worst, or, at any rate, the most gothically arousing. Also, Dornan is no stranger to wickedness; in “The Fall,” a BBC drama that shows on Netflix, he is a serial killer, armed with a rasping beard, his native Belfast accent, and roughly ten times the sexual allure that he projects in “Fifty Shades.” Could Ana’s fears be well founded? Is Christian a terminator? No. He is many things—a pianist, a pilot, a pervert, and a tremendous bore—but evil is not in his wardrobe. Ana asks casually if he is a “do-it-yourselfer.” That would explain a lot.

Christian, it transpires, has a private passion, the cause of what James calls “his odd I’ve-got-a-whopping-big-secret smile.” Down a corridor of his apartment, behind a locked door, lurks his Red Room. Lavishly stuffed with the tools of domestic torture, it is supposed to radiate a breathless lust, although the result looks more like a spread from House Beautiful . Here, within these crimson walls, our hero is free to express himself as a “dominant,” meaning not that he is the fifth tone of the diatonic scale, which really would be hot, but, rather, that he constrains and chastises women who wish to be treated thus. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Mostly, he sounds like your basic stalker: “I’m incapable of leaving you alone,” he informs Ana—a notion that appears to stimulate her, although it would easily warrant a call to 911. She succumbs, up to a point, but her recurring doubts lead Christian to dish up one of those crusty old no-means-yes propositions which feminism has battled for decades: “You want to leave? Your body tells me something different.” Pass the butt plug.

So how does the movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, stack up against the book? And what’s in it for non-Jamesians? Well, we lose Ana’s introduction to fellatio, set precariously in a bathtub; in a similar vein, we skip the breakfast that she shares with Christian at an International House of Pancakes. Above all, we are denied James’s personifications, which are so much livelier than her characters: “My sleepy subconscious has a final swipe at me.” “ yes ! My inner goddess is thrilled.” “ no ! my psyche screams.” Couldn’t someone have got Sarah Silverman to play the psyche?

On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could hardly be worse. No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth. There are poignant moments when the plainest of physical actions is left dangling beyond the reach of her prose: “I slice another piece of venison, holding it against my mouth.” The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read. Yet we should not begrudge E. L. James her triumph, for she has, in her lumbering fashion, tapped into a truth that often eludes more elegant writers—that eternal disappointment, deep in the human heart, at the failure of our loved ones to acquire their own helipad.

Much of the novel’s fixation with style, or with the barrage of stuff that a sense of style can buy, is carried onto the screen. Where the money shots should be, we get shots of what money can provide. The subtle silk ties that adorned the paperback covers, and which somehow made it O.K., by a dazzling sleight of the publisher’s hand, to read soft pornography in public, are arrayed in the opening scene. Ana can barely move for Audis. Christian wows her with rides, first in his thunderous chopper and then in his smooth white glider, presumably praying that she won’t have seen Pierce Brosnan do the same in “The Thomas Crown Affair.” The only viewer, in fact, who may feel shortchanged by “Fifty Shades of Grey” is Liam Helmer, who is listed in the credits as “BDSM Technical Consultant.” Check out the Red Room: rack upon rack of cutting-edge bullwhips, a variety of high-end ass paddles, and more restraining cuffs than you can shake a stick at. And how much of this kit gets used? A mere fraction, and even then Christian, supposedly the maestro of pain, can do little more than brush his cat-o’-nine-tails over Ana’s flesh with a feathery backhand. He looks like Roger Federer, practicing gentle cross-court lobs at the net.

And there you have the problem with this film. It is gray with good taste—shade upon shade of muted naughtiness, daubed within the limits of the R rating. Think of it as the “Downton Abbey” of bondage, designed neither to menace nor to offend but purely to cosset the fatigued imagination. You get dirtier talk in most action movies, and more genitalia in a TED talk on Renaissance sculpture. True, Dakota Johnson does her best, and her semi-stifled giggles suggest that, unlike James, she can see the funny side of all this nonsense. When Christian, alarmed by Ana’s maidenhood, considers “rectifying the situation,” she replies, “I’m a situation?”—a sharp rejoinder, although if I were her I’d be much more worried about the rectifying. Even Johnson’s valiant performance, however, cannot pierce the gloom, or persuade her co-star to lighten up. He brings color to her cheeks, courtesy of mild slaps, but she brings no light to his spirit in return. He spends half the time badgering her about a contract that has been drawn up, in which she—“the Submissive”—must consent to his supremacy. Clauses and subsections are haggled over in such detail that one feels bound to ask: How much of a sex film can this be, given that the people most likely to be turned on by it are lawyers?

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is being released in time for Valentine’s Day. That’s a bold move, since the film is not just unromantic but specifically anti-romantic; take your valentine along, by all means, but, be warned, it’ll be like watching “Rosemary’s Baby” at Christmas. Try holding hands as the hero taunts the rituals of sentiment, such as going out for dinner and a movie: “That’s not really my thing.” What his thing actually is, Lord knows, although, to judge by the importance that he attaches to grooming, regular feeding, and nicely buffed leather goods, my suspicion is that he doesn’t want a girlfriend at all. I know Mr. Grey’s whopping-big secret. He wants a pony. ♦

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Fifty Shades of Grey Is Not About Sex—and It’s Surprisingly Good

By John Powers

If you go to a lot of Hollywood screenings, you know there’s a special trembling in the air when the audience expects the movie to be good. But the air couldn’t have been deader at the Fifty Shades of Grey preview last night at the ArcLight. Yes, you heard a few scattered female whoops when the film finally started, but until then, every person you talked to had a bad feeling. We’d all heard reports that stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan had no chemistry. We’d heard that director Sam Taylor-Johnson didn’t see eye-to-eye with E. L. James, the author of the original books. As if that weren’t enough, the whole enterprise seemed ripe for disaster. At the best of times, it’s hard to adapt a popular novel for the screen, and here was a massive bestseller stuffed with scads of BDSM action—this in an era when Hollywood movies have become all spandex and no sex. Small wonder we were all on flop-watch. Critics prepared their snide jokes in advance; I’d already worked up a riff on the history of lousy sex movies.

Then the lights went down, and guess what? Fifty Shades of Grey turned out to be not just entertaining—at least until the clunky, exasperating final minute—but it also knows exactly what it’s doing. As you’re doubtless aware, it’s the story of a virginal, romantic English major, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), who gets involved with a handsome, uptight, controlling billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) who doesn’t do hearts and flowers—he’s into handcuffs and floggers. Whereas the novel treats their relationship with a seriousness others might reserve for Bible study, Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel see what’s funny in this fetishistic scenario. The couple’s early encounters possess an unexpected lightness—Johnson’s got a wonderful comic touch—and when Steele and Grey negotiate the written contract he’s prepared stating exactly what he can do to her body, the scene’s absurdity is saved by the filmmaker’s droll awareness that it’s absurd. Even when the two of them get down to the de rigueur sex stuff, most of which is generic R-rated business—you know, ice cubes sliding down torsos, the obligatory bare breasts and bums—the movie doesn’t submit to the dominance of dark eroticism. Like a vintage fifties melodrama, it takes lurid material, cleans it up, gives it a high gloss, and turns it toward heady and healthy emotion.

You see, whether James knows it or not, the original Fifty Shades of Grey is essentially a YA novel with bondage. For all its dirty bits, it’s not actually about Anastasia experiencing the joys of rough sex (though she does get off on some of it). It’s about how she redeems the psychologically twisted Grey—it’s not for nothing his first name’s Christian—by teaching him how to love, in part by meeting him halfway in his desires. This is, beneath it all, corny stuff, but what makes it engaging is Johnson, an actress of ineffably awkward charm, who pulls off the trick of bringing a thinly drawn character to vibrant life. While Dornan gets better and more complicated as the film goes along—at first, he displays all the erotic voltage of a taller Ryan Seacrest —Johnson is great all the way through. Channeling both her father, Don Johnson, and her mother, Melanie Griffith, she manages to do two opposite things at the same time. Even as she finds Grey’s style and sexual tastes rather amusing (in this, she is the audience’s surrogate), her every expression and gesture reveals she’s also really turned on by him. You can never really predict these things—who could’ve guessed Robert Pattinson would become bigger than Kristen Stewart ?—but with Fifty Shades of Grey, it looks like Dakota Johnson has just made herself a movie star.

For Dakota Johnson, a minute is never just a minute:

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Fifty Shades of Grey

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

I’m shocked — shocked, do you hear me?!? — that the film version of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey is such a dull, decorous affair, about as erotic as an ad for Pottery Barn. Yeah, the book attracted 100 million readers in 52 languages. But the book sucked. I know there are three novels ( Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed ), but I only made it through the first one. Literary torture isn’t my thing. But at least James suggested there might be something to learn from what connects a dominant and a submissive. (Only amateurs say “sadist” and “masochist.”)

Onscreen, directed by a slumming Sam Taylor-Johnson ( Nowhere Man ) from a sanitized script by Kelly Marcel, we have the story of a poor, virginal English major — one Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson). She finds the perfect man: Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), a 27-year-old, techno-billionaire hottie out to stop world hunger. Christian has a single flaw — he gets off by blindfolding Ana, tying her up in his Red Room of Pain, cuffing her to the wall and flogging her. What’s a girl to do?

According to the romance-novel sympathies of this movie, the answer is: domesticate him into a normal guy who’ll cuddle in the sack, charm her parents and do her bidding. Whoops! Now who’s being the dominant? Instead of dinner and a movie, Christian offers a contract that spells out how he wants to hold Ana in bondage with sex toys such as butt plugs and genital clamps. This being a consensual love story, Ana says no to anal and vaginal fisting. It’s quite the negotiation. Christian sweetens the deal by dressing her in high fashion, supplying a computer (the Apple plugs are relentless), buying a sports car, flying her around the Pacific Northwest in his chopper, taking her hang-gliding and — aww, he cares! — gifting her with first editions of Thomas Hardy. Where’s the rough stuff?

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Since the filmmakers are basically remaking Twilight with spikes standing in for vampire teeth, there isn’t any. No need to lock up grandma. Director Taylor-Johnson shoots all this crotch nuzzling and nipple nibbling with the careful good taste of a headmistress with strict instructions not to let the naughty kids get out of hand. The soothing soundtrack, purred and panted by the likes of Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding and Sia, help the few sex scenes (most saved for last) play like vintage MTV videos — all gloss, no grit. The movie shies away from welts, bruises and bodily fluids, though we do get a quick peek at Christian’s junk while he spanks Ana’s naked ass to a blushing pink.

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If you’re still with me, and I don’t blame you if you’re not, this kind of Cinderella porn is what substitutes for the book’s darker, bloodier fantasies. Sorry pervs, the tampon scene is gone! Amazingly, Johnson ( The Social Network , 21 Jump Street ), the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and no relation to the director, plays all this silliness as if she means it. She’s the one bright spot in a film that deals with sex by removing the joy of it. Luckily, Johnson suggests her mother’s pert, Working Girl mischief and gives Ana a core of feisty intelligence the book never hinted at. Sadly, costar Dornan, an Irish model-turned actor (he’s quite good being bad on the BBC series The Fall ), gives her a brick wall to act with. Either pulverized with fear or embarrassment, Dornan seems to have no idea who or what he is playing. Can’t blame him: Christian has no shades. He’s a human Ken doll with a kinky set of accessories that go unused. Don’t want to frighten the little girls of all ages and sexes who will line up to see this sanitized swill.

A few early reviews have given the film a pass because it’s not as dirty as advertised. They seem grateful. I’m disappointed. Twisted me! The true audiences for Fifty Shades of Grey are gluttons for punishment — by boredom.

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Movie Review: 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

VIDEO: Fans Lining Up to See 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

 -- Starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson

Two-and-a-half out of five stars

I had zero interest in reading " Fifty Shades of Grey " or writing a review comparing the movie to the book. Now, if someone tied me to a bedpost and forced me to read it while lightly flogging me with Cinnabons, I’d be so into it.

By the way, if this review becomes too much to handle, your safe word is “Kanye.”

Our beautiful love story commences when Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) volunteers to interview 27-year-old billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) for her roommate, Kate, a journalism major who’s battling a cold. Anastasia shows up at Grey’s office wearing an outfit that looks like Maria von Trapp made it out of curtains, while her body language screams timid. On the other hand, she does have a 4.0 GPA, pouty lips and big blue eyes. So, there’s that.

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Christian Grey’s dazzling office is completely staffed by women who look like they were hired by a Nordic head-hunting company specializing in Victoria’s Secret models. When we first meet Grey, he’s standing in his office before floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Seattle. It’s stunning shot, but also makes Grey -- Dornan, actually -- seem far less intimating than he’s meant to be. He’s clearly a handsome fella but I had a difficult time with his physicality, especially in the scenes when he’s being a “dominant.” But first, let’s discuss what works.

Grey’s initial odd but endearing courtship of Anastasia is amusing. He unexpectedly shows up at the hardware store where Anastasia works and asks her to help him find cable ties, masking tape and some rope. The audience is in on the joke, but Anastasia isn’t, and Johnson plays it like a pro. Dornan, however, as the handsome, confident and mysterious suitor, gets by at this point on his natural charm. He’s still not quite the presence he needs to be.

The two are falling for one another. That’s a problem for Grey because, as he tells Anastasia, he doesn’t do romance. He has a singular interest -- one that involves floggers, nipple clamps, spanking paddles, handcuffs and an adorable rabbit named Mr. Peanut. (Fine, there’s no rabbit.) Christian explains to Anastasia that he’s what’s called a “dominant” and he would like her to be his “submissive.” It requires signing a contract with very specific rules about how she’s supposed to behave and take care of herself.

Anastasia’s supposedly conflicted about whether to sign, but there’s never really enough doubt shown to make it believable. And while Grey’s conflicted about his feelings toward Anastasia, feelings that may extend beyond his dominant-submissive relationship, it generates almost no dramatic tension. It’s boring.

It’s fair to say, the sensual nature of some of the BDSM scenes in this movie isn’t something you’d normally find in a mainstream film, but based on the mythology surrounding the "Fifty Shades of Grey" novel, or at least the media narrative about it, the sex scenes are rather timid. Dornan, whom I’m sure both women and some men alike will find appealing when he’s mostly naked, wasn’t particularly convincing in those scenes. He seemed uncomfortable, not like the BDSM veteran Grey is supposed to be.

What may be more surprising than the sex scenes is some of the dialogue, particularly Grey’s response to Anastasia when she asks him if he’s going to make love to her now (I’m not going to spoil it for you). But then, I believe the sex is just window dressing for the real fantasy here: Anastasia’s ability to change Christian.

Let’s talk about Dakota Johnson. The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson is easily the best thing in "Fifty Shades of Grey." As Anastasia Steele, she’s the perfect blend of innocence and confidence; a stealthy heart-breaker who at first comes across as mousey and innocent, but suddenly and convincingly becomes confident and coquettish. On the other hand, as Christian Grey, Dornan does everything he’s asked to do, but he’s just not the intimidating, confused, tortured presence he’s supposed to be.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson could’ve done better with pacing and creating more dramatic tension. Her best work comes at the end of the movie, punctuating a film that had been largely devoid of dramatic tension and drama with a well-constructed, emotional moment that almost had me wanting to see what was next.

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DVD & Streaming

Fifty Shades of Grey

Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

February 13, 2015
Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele; Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey; Jennifer Ehle as Carla; Eloise Mumford as Kate; Victor Rasuk as Jose; Luke Grimes as Elliot Grey; Marcia Gay Harden as Mrs. Grey

Home Release Date

May 8, 2015
Sam Taylor-Johnson

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Blame the common cold for what follows.

Kate Kavanagh was all set to interview the dashing young business magnate Christian Grey. The soon-to-be-journalism graduate had her questions at the ready, a recorder primed to catch every word and pause. But wouldn’t you know it, a virus turned Kate into a walking mass of sniffles and sneezes, and she knows the only interview she’ll be doing will be with a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup.

The interview still has to get done for the college paper. So Kate asks her roomie, Anastasia Steele, if she might fill in. Hey, the girl’s an English lit major, right? Close enough to journalism.

Thoughtful roommate that she is, Ana dutifully heads to Christian’s oh-so-chic Seattle offices. “Clean,” she later describes him—crisp in his gray suit and tie, precise in movement and language, Ken Doll pretty, intimidating. Flustered, she’s forgotten a pen. He gives her a pencil.

What’s the secret of his success, she asks. He has a way with people, he says. He can evaluate them quickly and utilize them to fulfill his needs. When she suggests he’s something of a control freak, he agrees. “I exercise control in all things, Ms. Steele.” What does he like to do in his spare time? “I enjoy various physical pursuits,” he says, a hint of a smile playing across his face.

And then he begins asking Ana questions.

“There’s really not much to know about me,” Ana says with a blush.

Christian won’t believe that. And perhaps in that moment, the young tycoon decides to know Ana in every way possible.

Positive Elements

We are broken people living in a broken world, and Christian is a prime example. “I’m 50 shades of f—ed up,” he admits, and both Ana and the audience will ultimately agree.

Positive? Not even close. But Fifty Shades of Grey is actually a bit more than just a squalid exploration of one man’s sexual predilections. In Ana, it gives us a woman who wants to heal his brokenness. Let drop the sordid trappings in which Grey flails, and you’re left with a lopsided love story of sorts—a longing for real intimacy, a desire to partner with someone in every capacity. Ana longs for a bond far stronger and more powerful than the handcuffs Christian so likes. And Christian—as much as he tries to make the relationship all about sex—also finds that love is getting in the way.

Christian’s drive to inflict pain ultimately tears the two apart. Ana walks out, refusing to be treated as merely an object for his pleasure and reservoir for pain. We know from subsequent books that their estrangement is not permanent, of course. But this movie, at least, offers a small statement as it ends supporting self-worth and respect.

Sexual Content

Moreover, Ana and Christian’s sexual relationship is predicated on bondage and sadomasochism. It’s a predilection extreme enough for Christian to make Ana sign a nondisclosure statement beforehand. Ana and Christian also go over a sexual-behavior and -expectation contract that prompts a conversation about specific sex acts too detailed and graphic to print. There are references to prostitution and necrophilia.

Sadder than all of that is Christian’s insistence that he wants all sex to be divorced from any sort of love or intimacy. He’s averse even to Ana touching him. And it’s worth noting that Christian’s violent and narcissistic approach to sex stems, it’s suggested, from sexual abuse he suffered as a teen.

Violent Content

All of that some might claim is done in the name of sexual stimulation. But then Christian flat-out “punishes” Ana by beating her bare backside with a belt—hard.

Christian’s and Ana’s relationship, clearly, is predicated on an abusive power differential. Even when the two are not engaged in sadomasochistic sex, their dynamic is fraught with a sense of domination and subjugation—of predator and prey. Christian is meant to come off as dangerous at times, which makes us fear at times for Ana even when no obvious physical threat is present. And there’s a sense that Ana’s psyche, even more than her body, is in constant danger at her boyfriend’s hand. “You’re mine!” he tells her in a severe tone. “All mine! Understand?”

When Christian buys rope, cable ties and duct tape at a hardware store, Ana jokes, “You’re the complete serial killer!” Christian’s chest has scars that he refuses to talk about—the insinuation being that his mother caused them.

Crude or Profane Language

Seven or eight f-words and one s-word. “D–n” and “h—” are used a couple of times apiece. God’s name is misused more than a dozen times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Ana does shots and gets drunk, staggering a bit. Other characters drink wine regularly, and also quaff champagne and margaritas. Christian scolds Ana for having “another Cosmo” with her mother (excess alcohol consumption is forbidden under the terms of the contract). We learn that Christian’s mother was a crack addict (who died when he was 4).

Other Negative Elements

While drunk, Ana throws up. When she wakes up the next morning, Christian tells her he’s sent his chauffeur to buy her new clothes since hers were covered with vomit.

In Fifty Shades of Grey’ s most brutal scene, Christian—driven by a compulsion even he can’t understand—decides he must “punish” Ana. He forces the naked girl to bend over and begins hitting her with a belt, telling her to count as the blows land. “One,” she says softly after the first. “Two,” she sobs, tears streaming down her face. Her voice never rises, never finds a way past the very real physical and yet so very emotional pain.

When she reaches “six,” the punishment is over. She gets up, covering her breasts in embarrassment and humiliation—staring in horror at this half-man, half-monster she so cared for.

“Did that give you pleasure?” she hisses at Christian, each word covered in ice.

In the Bible, the number six is associated with man—his weakness, his imperfection, his fall. Strangely fitting, then, that Christian set the limit of his lashes at six, that his actions so clearly illustrate what happens when men try to fix their own brokenness. An imagined Eden is shattered, Eve covers herself in shame.

Based on E L James’ best-selling novel and nearly unrivaled cultural sensation, Fifty Shades of Grey gives us not one but two broken people hoping to find salvation in each other. This is a love story, it could be said. But any love story without God gets twisted into a broken, heartbreaking jumble. We go to extremes when we try to sate our leaking souls with the stuff of this world. When we don’t understand the love of Christ, we don’t understand love at all. We needlessly hurt the ones we think we love. We confuse words like honor and obey with subjugation and degradation . We have a monster within us, all of us. We make a mess of things.

And what a mess this movie is.

For men, it can push us toward fixation on dark and dangerous fantasies. And that’s before even mentioning the nudity. For women, we’re given the deceptive allure of an abusive protagonist who checks, it seems, many a literary fantasy box: a strong, good-looking, fabulously wealthy and (this is key) broken man who needs to be shown what real love is.

This is why Ana suffers such abuse. This is why so many of us are reading and watching. Never mind whether the content contained in Fifty Shades of Grey falls short of or crosses over a legal definition of domestic abuse or pornography; with a cancerous intensity it caters to the cravings and hungers that all pornography serves. Porn rips us away from the real, flesh-and-blood people in our lives. It feeds unrealistic, dangerous and hurtful expectations of what sex and love can be twisted into. As it becomes ever more pervasive in our culture, it damages and abuses us in ways that we’re just beginning to fully understand.

A postscript. There is much more to be said, of course, about Fifty Shades of Grey and its impact on all of us. And so we’ve covered both the books and the movie in our Blog. Link here to read:

We’re Reviewing Fifty Shades of Grey. Here’s Why. Fifty Trades of ‘Shades’? Fifty Shades of Abusive Influence?

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Movies | Review: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

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Adapted and directed by women of considerably larger talent than novelist E.L. James, the film version of “Fifty Shades of Grey” turns out to be an intriguing tussle — not in the sack, or in the Red Room of Pain, but in its internal war between the dubious erotica of James’ novel (the first of three) and the far craftier trash offered by the movie.

It’s poetic justice. James’ love story concerns an impossibly rich, sexually exotic, emotionally remote billionaire and the collegiate virgin who becomes the Submissive to his Dominant, in the parlance of the bondage/discipline/sado-masochism realm. The novel is very likely the worst-written international bestseller since the “Twilight” series and maybe since, once upon a time in the same kingdom of forbidden love, “The Bridges of Madison County.”

What has happened with “Fifty Shades of Grey”? As with the first “Twilight” movie back in 2008, the one directed with canny, low-key commitment by Catherine Hardwicke, James’ book has been de-crudified, its most operatic expressions of lust stricken from the record. That leaves the greasy, sexualized violence of the premise, but even that has been tilted ever so slightly to a more skeptical position.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her adapter, Kelly Marcel, remain true to the Etch-a-Sketch contours of the narrative, up to and including the abrupt cliffhanger ending that really doesn’t work in a stand-alone movie. At a recent screening, yelps of frustration greeted the final exchange between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey as they reached the impasse setting up books two and three. So. While the film will surely kill this Valentine’s Day weekend, those yelps may point to a medium-smash as opposed to an extra-large model.

Rumors of James getting all whips-and-chainsy with her on-set demands during filming have been circulating ever since the first photos appeared of Dakota Johnson, who plays Ana, and Jamie Dornan, a.k.a. His Abcellence, as Christian. I wonder if James could even recognize some of the screenplay’s exchanges, since they occasionally approximate human speech and, in the crucial case of Ana, create a female protagonist who isn’t entirely a doormat. The set-up’s the same as it was in the book. Covering for her ailing college roommate (Eloise Mumford, very good), bookish but demurely smoldering Ana interviews the elusive Mr. Grey for a class assignment. Smolder, smolder, smolder and pretty soon, Ana and Christian are dating, sort of. His stalkerish behavior and insane control-freakery is mitigated by exquisite taste in wines and a penchant for shirtlessly interpreting melancholy sonatas at the keyboard with the lights of Seattle far below.

Like the vampire and werewolf hunks of the “Twilight” series, Christian is forbidden fruit, served hot. Ana is the retrograde heroine metaphorically tied to a railroad track (and later, literally tied to other things) who yearns for adventure, and release, and a healthy way to explore her dawning sexuality and find a boyfriend who’ll open up a little. Is that so much? But it is. It is so much in this world. The bulk of “Fifty Shades of Grey” presents a world ruled by a helicopter-flying gym rat raised on a steady diet of “9 1/2 Weeks,” Zalman King’s soft-core cable fantasies and fashion spreads straight out of “Muted Blues and Greys Monthly.”

The surprise, if there is a surprise here, is that the film has found a slyly humorous tone for much of the running time. Johnson gets all the right kinds of laughs with Ana’s flustered or chops-busting reactions to her Dominant’s latest exhibitions of A) hotness, or B) scariness. Reading the novel, which set a record for high-volume, clinically successful yet grimly downbeat orgasms in mainstream erotica, nobody and nothing seemed human, or even humanoid. The movie actually does, though Dornan struggles to keep up with Johnson’s loose, ingratiating rhythms. He’s not terrible, but the Northern Ireland native’s dialect work (going for neutral American) doesn’t quite sound natural, and he has a way of hitting one note emotionally per scene and sticking with it, while trying not to blink. This is what they teach models-turned-actors at the Hawklike Stare School of Troubled Dreamboats.

Even de-crudified, the world, the ethos and the selling points of the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon are to me suspect and hollow. The story exhibits zero interest in how a contrivance such as Christian could possibly compartmentalize his interests to this degree and still be called an earthling. However much or little intercourse is involved, popular fiction often showcases impossible fantasies in lieu of people; it’s the golden ticket in “Gone Girl,” among others. For an hour or so, director Taylor-Johnson sidesteps the biggest land mines in her material, but as Christian’s possessive, obsessive, secret-laden nature gathers the storm clouds overhead, and Ana goads her master into testing her limits, there’s only so much a director can do to pretend the material is something it isn’t.

Going in, I expected either a camp hoot or a complete, slavishly faithful Submissive of a film, playing opposite the Dominant novel. Instead, “Fifty Shades” turns out to be roughly as pretty good as the first “Twilight” — appropriate, since James wrote “Fifty Shades” as sexed-up, loinzapoppin’ fan fiction paying tribute to the “Twilight” bestsellers. For the record, “Fifty Shades” has been banned outright in Malaysia, while receiving a 13-and-up rating in France. As Christian Grey would never, ever say: It’s a funny old world.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” – 2.5 stars

MPAA rating: R (for strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and for language)

Running time: 2:05

Opens: Thursday night

mjphillips@tribpub .com

Twitter @phillipstribune

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<em>50 Shades of Grey</em> review

We dare you to watch <em>fifty shades of grey</em> and not laugh your ass off.

“I want to take you to my play room.”

Please, Mr. Grey. Lead the way.

And now presenting a sentence I never expected to write, ever: I really, really enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey . Based on a ridiculously popular and poorly-reviewed novel of the same name , the erotic love story about a lonely man who wants nothing more than to swoop a young, virginal woman off of her feet and onto a whipping post should not be my kind of movie. Yet every second left me howling with laughter, jaw-dropped in stunned silence during hardcore sex scenes, or, at the very least, on the edge of my seat.

Not that I’m sitting here the morning after watching Fifty Shades of Grey thinking it’s a good movie. It’s not. But it’s highly enjoyable. There are huge, uproarious laughs to be had during the E.L. James adaptation, and they’re almost all at the expense of the film. When Christian Grey, in all sincerity and without provocation, leans into Anastasia Steele and moans, “If you were mine, you wouldn’t sit right for a week,” you can’t help but burst out into nervous laughter.

Cha Cha Real Smooth review: A lovestruck, kindhearted gem

And that was the experience for the vast majority of the audience in my Fifty Shades screening. Audible , irrepressible giggling filled the air as Grey expresses his desires to bite Ana’s lip, “but not without [her] written consent,” and again when Ana calls Christian a sadist, and he helpfully corrects her: “No. I’m a dominant.” There’s the safe words Ana must remember when being pushed too far beyond her sexual limits: “Yellow” for caution, “red” for OK-wow-you-cannot-put-that-there. And then there’s Christian’s solemn promise: “I don’t make love. I f—k. Hard .”

This is the movie you’re paying to see when you pick up a Fifty Shades of Grey ticket. It’s ridiculous. Every strip of masking tape, every creatively applied tie, every flogger, everything will have you giggling at some point, assuming you have a pulse.

Except for the sex. Even then, some chuckles and gasps and sighs will escape your lips as Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson slip out of their clothes and into something less comfortable. But then comes the Beyoncé music. Then the groping. The heavy petting. Next, he baby-birds cold wine into her mouth, then kisses all over her body with an ice cube, and Beyoncé gets louder, and they get louder, and you get louder, and…

Whew. Sorry. It got hot in here for a second.

Look, the sex stuff is hot. I don’t take any pride in admitting it, but it is what it is: a very sexy movie. That’s impressive, considering numerous reports suggesting problems on the set, and a lack of camaraderie between lead stars Dornan and Johnson. The lack of chemistry absolutely shows in their not-having-sex scenes, but when the lights dim and the threat of penetration permeates the air (at least I believe that’s what I’m smelling), the heat is very much on.

When you walk into Fifty Shades , if you walk into it at all, you’re walking into it for the sex. It’s perhaps not as plentiful as you might expect, certainly not as much as featured in the book. (That’s the scoop from my wife, my plus one to the movie and a recent survivor of the Fifty Shades of Grey reading experience.) But the sex scenes that exist are explicit and shocking in their hotness. Dornan does not get nearly as naked as Johnson — that would be a hard feat to accomplish — but even in his case, if you look closely, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dong show, ala Ben Affleck in Gone Girl . And here I was thinking Dornan had a “ no-todger ” clause in his contract!

So, even though there’s very little chemistry between Dornan and Johnson as actors, and even though the kind of sexual relationship Christian Grey wants from Anastasia Steele is unconventional at best and harmful at worst, you root for these two to make it work. Not because you want a happily ever after, but because you want more sex scenes. And you want to laugh each and every single time they talk about it, or anything else for that matter.

I don’t take any pride in admitting it, but it is what it is: a very sexy movie.

What about the plot, you ask? This is it: Christian Grey is a high-powered industrialist who becomes obsessed with a graduating college student and virgin named Anastasia after a chance meeting during which she bites her lip and turns him on. He decides she must be his, and he aggressively pursues her, not to become his girlfriend, but to become his submissive in a BDSM relationship. She would be the 16th woman to agree to such a contract. And when I say contract, I mean it literally.

There’s a written form she must sign if she wants to continue seeing and sexing Christian, and the whole thrust (!) of the movie is about whether or not she’ll agree to his terms, or if she can convince him to loosen up. Spoiler alert: The last thing Christian Grey wants to do is loosen anything, except maybe his tie, for tightening purposes of course.

That’s it. That’s the plot, folks. What more can you expect from a story that started out as Twilight fan-fiction? From the very jump, Fifty Shades of Grey is built on bad bones. Good thing the boning is great. If you don’t believe me, enter Mr. Grey’s play room and see for yourself. I dare you.

Fifty Shades of Grey is in theaters this weekend.

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If you've ever shopped on Amazon -- and these days, who hasn't? -- then you've likely heard about the option for an Amazon Prime membership. This subscription is mostly touted as a way to save on shipping costs when purchasing from Amazon, but it also comes bundled with some other handy features including access to Amazon's streaming service, Amazon Prime Video. You'll find a range of movies and shows to watch, but if you're not sure whether you need yet another streaming service, there is an option for a free trial to see if you like the service before paying for it. Is there an Amazon Prime Video free trial? There is indeed an Amazon Prime Video free trial, but it's tied into the Prime free trial, which lasts for a month and may or may not be available to you. To see if you're eligible, you'll need to and check. The general rule is that the Prime free trial (and by extension, an Amazon Prime Video free trial) is available to Amazon accounts that have either never signed up for a Prime trial or have not had Prime -- either a trial or paid membership -- any time in the last 12 months.

The Prime free trial is usually for 30 days, similar to the Hulu free trial. If you're not eligible for the Amazon Prime Video free trial, though, then be patient: Sometimes, Amazon will sometimes offer free trials to its loyal customers, so if you have an Amazon account (but not a Prime membership) and shop on the site regularly, you might find a Prime trial offer sitting in your inbox one day. Often, though, these are shorter seven- or 14-day trials rather than the 30-day trial. Nonetheless, it's obvious that Amazon is a bit more generous with these trial periods than other services -- there's no Disney+ free trial or Netflix free trial, for example, but it's thankfully much easier to get an Amazon Prime Video free trial.

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In any event, you're looking to cut the cable cord, DirecTV Stream is on more service to consider among others such as Hulu With Live TV, Sling TV, and the aforementioned YouTube TV.

In 1985, the World Wrestling Federation launched WrestleMania, the Super Bowl of professional wrestling that helped WWF become the dominant force in sports entertainment. Nearly four decades later, the WWF is now the WWE, but WrestleMania remains the flagship event of the company, which it describes as "the showcase of the immortals." This year, WrestleMania 40 is coming to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Lincoln Financial Field. And it's happening at a time when WWE is hotter than it's been in ages.

The reason for WWE's resurgence in popularity isn't the return of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson or even the fall and disgrace of former owner Vince McMahon. It was the post-pandemic booking of Roman Reigns and the Bloodline that elevated that group and their rivals, including Cody Rhodes and Sami Zayn, into larger stars. The emergence of LA Knight, the return of CM Punk after a decade away, and other factors also played a large role. But the primary reason is that the booking of Paul "Triple H" Levesque delivered the compelling storylines and characters that were sorely lacking during McMahon's final years in charge.

Fifty Shades of Dull

The movie adaptation of E. L. James’s bestseller succeeds in toning down the book’s most egregious elements—but reveals that there’s very little left underneath.

Has there ever been lower-hanging fruit than the cinematic adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey ? The movie has tens of millions of devoted fans set to queue up, and tens of millions more wondering what all the fuss is about. And … how to put this delicately? It couldn’t possibly be as bad as the book .

And, indeed, director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation is not nearly as painful an experience as E. L. James’s novel. The author’s sub-leaden prose is gone, thank goodness, as is the internal monologue of her 21-going-on-14 protagonist, Anastasia Steele. There are no holy shit s, holy cow s, holy crap s, holy fuck s, or holy Moses es; no boy s or oh my s or jeez es. There’s no mention of Ana’s “inner goddess,” let alone of it “doing the merengue.” For this, we can all be grateful. (Much of James’s dialogue, alas, is rendered intact.)

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Taylor-Johnson also tones down, to some degree, the most troubling element of the novel. In it, the sexual encounters between college student Ana and her paramour, the 27-year-old billionaire tycoon and S&M enthusiast Christian Grey, are never nonconsensual in the most literal sense. But her consent is frequently coerced, as my colleague Emma Green has noted at length . Christian makes clear that he wants to explore new sexual territory. Ana makes clear that she does not. He makes clear that it’s his way or the highway. She relents out of fear of losing him. By cutting out Ana’s internal monologue, Taylor-Johnson removes many of the moments in which her unhappiness with Christian's sexual mistreatment is made most explicit.

That’s not the only transgressive (or would-be transgressive) material that’s been cut. The post-tampon sex scene is out. Ana’s performance of oral sex on Christian is gone as well, though memory of the phrase “my very own Christian Grey-flavored Popsicle” will, I fear, remain with us forever. The Ben Wa balls do not make an appearance, and the beneath-the-dinner-table groping of Ana that Christian undertakes at his parents’ house is presented as decidedly tame.

Which leaves? Well, awfully little. While Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation may not be as unpleasant or offensive as it could have been, it is stunningly, mind-glazingly dull. This is a two-hour film containing maybe half an hour’s worth of anything actually happening.

There's the excruciating meet-cute in which Ana (Dakota Johnson) stumbles her way through a school-paper interview with Christian (Jamie Dornan)— literally stumbles, his first sight being of her falling in through the doorway. On their next meeting, he saves her from the tragic fate of being run over by a bicycle. And for their third, she drunk-dials him from the bathroom of a club and he shows up just in time to have her vomit on his shoes and then pass out altogether. (Sexy!) He whisks her away to his apartment, shows her his Red Room of Pain, and asks her to sign a lengthy contract to become his sexual “submissive.”

While she dithers on this attractive offer, he meets her parents and she meets his, and none of these four presumptive adults suggest even the possibility that there might be something untoward about a hard-charging global CEO romancing a virginal college student. He takes her up in a helicopter. He takes her up in a glider. He gives her a room in his apartment. He plays Chopin on the piano in order to convey the sensitive soul beneath his cool, cruel veneer. He buys her a three-volume first edition of Tess of the d’Urbervilles . He buys her a laptop. He buys her a car. His chauffeur buys her some vomit-free clothing.

They have between 10 and 20 variations on the following conversation:

Ana: Why do you want to spank/whip/tie me up? Why can’t we be an ordinary couple?

Christian: Because this is what I am .

And of course they have sex. Theoretically, it is portrayed as “kinky” sex though, as noted, the kinkier bits of the book have mostly been cut, and none of them were all that kinky to begin with. So Christian ties Ana up with a necktie, with leather shackles, with rope. He tickles her with an ice cube. He tickles her with an ostrich feather. He spanks her gently with his hand. He swats her lightly with a crop, and later with a “flogger.” Though there is discussion of vibrators, dildos, and butt plugs, none of these items are ever in evidence, let alone in use. With the exception of the movie’s climax (no, not that, the narrative kind), pretty much nothing takes place that would scandalize your parents, and perhaps your parents’s parents. This is a movie that features less frontal nudity than Forgetting Sarah Marshall .

It has been widely rumored that the movie’s stars, Johnson and Dornan, actively dislike one another, and both have said in interviews that they were very uncomfortable when filming the movie’s sex scenes. I am sorry to say that neither is a persuasive enough performer to give any impression otherwise. The sex scenes begin gently and conclude pneumatically, but they offer vanishingly little in the way of heat or life or joy or daring. They are, if anything, less risqué than such long-ago, R-rated staples as 9 ½ Weeks or Fatal Attraction . In addition to erasing pain from the Ana-Christian equation, Taylor-Johnson has largely erased pleasure. The stultifying sameness of the sex sequences is such that I suspect one could shuffle them around without anyone noticing.

During the non-sexual scenes, Johnson occasionally displays real ease and finesse onscreen. Unfortunately, she's clearly been saddled with a directive to convey her character’s burgeoning sensuality through a near-constant oral fixation. It’s been said that the movie contains 20 minutes of sex; if this is the case, it must contain at least 40 minutes of Ana biting her lip or putting a pencil in her mouth.

Dornan, however, fares far worse. In part, this is a problem of page-to-screen translation: In the book, Christian is seen only through Ana’s eyes, as a kind of divine distillation of masculine charisma, a six-foot Y chromosome in a tailored suit. As such, the role would be a tough challenge for any actor. (It’s a shame, though, that American Psycho -era Christian Bale was not available to give it a try.) But Dornan, despite his exemplary turn in The Fall, is utterly lacking in the fierce intensity this role requires. It doesn’t help that the Irish actor can manage only an intermittent approximation of an American accent. His native brogue is evident in the very first scene, and try as he might to choke it down, it keeps coming back up, like an elocutionary hairball.

As for Taylor-Johnson, she is a respected artist and it’s hard to know what she (with screenwriter Kelly Marcel) might have made of the movie if left to her own devices. What we do know is that she was not so left: By all accounts, she dealt with near-constant interference from James. The author was given uncommon creative control when she sold the book rights, and she weighed in heavily—and according to most reports, unhelpfully—on every aspect of the production, from costume to set design to dialogue, with an explicit personal mandate of "protecting" the experience of the book's fans. The final line of the movie was a particular bone of contention between the two, with James, unfortunately, prevailing. It is perhaps a fitting irony that this should be the fate of the movie version of Fifty Shades of Grey : contractually enslaved to an unrelenting control freak.

Screen Rant

Fifty shades star explains his reaction to movie's negative reviews.

Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan details his reaction to the movie's widespread negative reviews, as the film sparked online vitriol.

Jamie Dornan "hid " and shut himself off from the world after negative reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey affected him.
Despite being critically panned, the Fifty Shades movies were highly successful at the box office, bringing in millions of dollars.
The financial success of Fifty Shades of Grey led to increased exposure for Dornan, opening doors for him in Hollywood and helping shape his career.

Jamie Dornan explains how he reacted to the negative review of Fifty Shades of Grey . Adapted from the E.L. James novel series, the first Fifty Shades of Grey film was released in 2015 . The film was followed up by sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Speaking on BBC ’s Desert Island Discs , Dornan details how Fifty Shades of Grey ’s negative reviews affected him. According to the actor, he “ hid ,” and even shut “ off from the world a little bit ” at director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s vacant home. After “ films two and three were greenlit overnight ,” Dornan already knew that there would “ be much more damnation to come .” Check out the full quote from Dornan below:

I think I hid. I was coming off the back of career-altering reviews for ‘The Fall’ and BAFTA nominations and all the madness ‘The Fall’ brought… to ridicule. We went down to Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s place. They weren’t there. They let us have their place in the country and we sort of hid there for awhile and shut ourselves off from the world a little bit. It made so much money so like… films two and three were greenlit overnight. It was a strange thing because there’s a bit of ridicule here and I’m now contracted to do two more, knowing that there will be much more damnation to come.

Why Fifty Shades of Grey Was a Success (Despite Reviews)

As a book series that originated as Twilight fan-fiction, Fifty Shades of Grey was already regarded as bad literature. The writing quality did not increase as it was transferred to the big screen, carrying with it the indulgence of smut over story and salaciousness over style. All three Fifty Shades movies were critically panned , with the first film getting a 25% Rotten Tomatoes score, the second an 11%, and the third an equally low 11%.

Just like the bestselling novels, however, the cinematic hollowness of the Fifty Shades series did not at all diminish its box office returns. Fifty Shades of Grey , Fifty Shades Darker , and Fifty Shades Freed brought in worldwide box office returns of $570.9 million, $381.5 million, and $372.3 million, respectively . These totals represented huge returns on the films’ budgets, the highest of which was only $55 million.

Fifty Shades Of Grey: 10 Things Christian Did That Fans Can't Get Over

For Dornan, the financial success of Fifty Shades of Grey meant huge gains in exposure . While much of this resulted in negative press, the Fifty Shades movies can also be seen as a launching point for the actor in Hollywood, as he went on to feature in several mainstream films including Trolls World Tour , Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar , and A Haunting in Venice . While Fifty Shades of Grey may have been the actor’s first experience with severe Hollywood berating, it was also a formative part of his Hollywood career.

Source: BBC’s Desert Island Discs

Fifty Shades of Grey

Based on the book by E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey is the first film in the trilogy that follows naive literature student Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), whose life changes upon meeting the complicated and tormented billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dorman). Drawn to each other, the two start a romantic relationship where Steele uncovers Grey's secrets - and explores her own personal desires. The sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker continues the story of Anatasia Steele and Christian Grey. After leaving Christian in the previous film, Anatasia finds herself inexplicably drawn back to him despite her reservations about their relationship. As the two grow close again, secrets from Christian's past come back to haunt him, and Anatasia must decide if her love for Christian outweighs everything that comes with being in a relationship with him. The film stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan as Anatasia and Christian, with a further cast that includes Eric Johnson, Bella Heathcote, and Kim Basinger. The final film in the Fifty Shades trilogy, Fifty Shades Freed follows the newlywed lives of Anatasia Steele and Christian Grey. Still riding high from their wedding, Ana and Christian are brought back down to earth when a break-in at Christian's company heralds the return of an old nemesis, and outside forces threaten to pull the couple apart once more. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan reprise their roles as Ana and Christian. You can buy the 3-movie bundle for just $25 for Amazon Prime Day.

Fifty Shades Of Grey review

Lukewarm bodies..

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Fifty Shades the movie seems destined to inspire more eye-rolling than lip-biting, even if there’s no denying that its protagonist is better served by the film than the book. Sam Taylor-Johnson's adaptation of EL James' bajillion-selling 'bonk-buster' book series does a coolly effective job – faithful enough to the even the smallest details to satiate fans, it’s also much leaner, and offers a welcome change of perspective. It's far from the disaster you're expecting to see, to the extent it almost tricks you into thinking it’s better than it is: well-polished it may be, but it’s still a bit of a turd.

You'll know the basics of the plot even if you've never read the spawned-from- Twilight -fan-fiction novels. Moody, Disney -prince-handsome billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) tries to coerce awestruck graduate Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) into signing a contract for a BDSM relationship that’ll make her the submissive to his dominant.

The most obvious (and welcome) trim from the book is Anastasia’s inner monologue; the film mercifully spares us a recreation of her inner goddess and reproachful subconscious. It helps transform Ana from a fairly insufferable drip on the page into a really rather likeable romantic lead. It’s a star-making turn from Johnson, turning potential career poison into a major calling card. She beams with likeability, always on hand to puncture the rising pomposity with a well-timed line or an adorkable dance move.

Dornan fares less well. Christian was always going to struggle to be more than a stalker-y cipher, and he’s deprived of the big-screen upsell that Ana gets, leaving Dornan little more to do than glower and show off his (upper) body in a role that’s as thankless as Edward Cullen. It's hard to know what Ana sees in him, beyond his billions and the fact he looks like Jamie Dornan.

The absence of Dornan’s tackle is not really made up for by unsubtle phallic imagery, from Christian’s imposing office block, to his Grey-branded pencils. While frequent, the sex scenes are similarly reserved. The books’ primary (only?) selling point, here the encounters are tamer; the most successful sex scene actually feels a bit spontaneous, but the rest are generally too choreographed and carefully presented to generate real steam.

The playroom interludes aren’t the only thing that’s slick and soulless. Like the book, the film is clearly intended as wish-fulfilment fantasy: the camera pervs over Grey’s hotel-like home, shooting it with the same drooling lenswork that adores his sculpted abs. His car collection and wardrobe get the same treatment. At times it feels more like an interiors magazine than a movie. The supporting cast are basically a collection of Gap models scattered around for set dressing.

What makes Fifty Shades so anticlimactic is that it actually starts promisingly: the light-touch first half is actually pretty funny, to the extent that it feels like a good movie-within-a-movie, a smart parody of the source material. It wills you to laugh at some of the dialogue and scenarios the book wants you to take seriously: a line like “I don’t make love – I fuck. Hard.” was surely designed for ironic whoops rather than genuine cooing.

The tone can’t be sustained though, and by the time you need to invest in the drama, it’s too late to take it seriously. And for newbies unfamiliar with the book, there’s a chance the abrupt ending will leave you feeling short-changed, like the film’s rolled over and kicked you out of bed before you’ve quite finished.

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.

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Fifty Shades of Grey
Movie & TV guides. When college senior Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) steps in for her sick roommate to interview prominent businessman Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) for their campus paper ...
Fifty Shades of Grey
Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 19, 2019. Leslie Combemale Cinema Siren. There is little more critical than to say a third of the film had people laughing at dialogue, and the other two ...
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Fifty Shades of Grey: Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. With Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford. Literature student Anastasia Steele's life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey.
Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Review
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY the movie -- like the best-selling erotic novel it's based on -- is a simple story: Virginal college senior Anastasia Steele ( Dakota Johnson) must step in for her journalism major roommate, Kate, to interview 27-year-old billionaire Christian Grey ( Jamie Dornan ), who's immediately taken with the soft-spoken brunette.
Review: Fifty Shades of Grey : Where's the Wicked Whiplash?
Here are 15 takes on Fifty Shades: 1. Anastasia (Dakota Johnson in the movie) literally stumbles into a meeting with Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), 27-year-old owner of a huge Seattle IT company ...
Review: In 'Fifty Shades of Grey' Movie, Sex Is a Knotty Business
Drama, Romance, Thriller. Not Rated. 2h 5m. By A.O. Scott. Feb. 11, 2015. At the end of a recent New York sneak preview of " Fifty Shades of Grey " — in the blackout between the final lines ...
Fifty Shades of Grey
Jan 1, 2023. Any moral criticism on the story behind the movie, while potentially valid, should not be addressed against the movie, but rather against the book. I am scoring the movie a 10, but I do admit that various element of the story are in visible contrast with principles purported by other movement like notably the "MeToo" movement.
'Fifty Shades of Grey': Film Review
As the tens of millions of readers of Fifty Shades of Grey know, Christian Grey doesn't do hearts and flowers. The long-fingered antihero of E L James' 2011 novel is a sexual dominant ...
Movie Review: 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
Robin Lindsay • February 13, 2015. The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews "Fifty Shades of Grey.".
Fifty Shades of Grey Review: Dakota Johnson Is Superb; Jamie Dornan
Whatever she went through, Johnson is superb. The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, she resembles neither one. Her gift (which her mother had before all the shtick and plastic surgery ...
Fifty Shades Of Grey, movie review: Jamie Dornan's Christian is like a
For all the genius with which it has been marketed and distributed, the film adaptation of Fifty Shades Of Grey turns out to be anti-climactic on almost every level.. Shot in a glossy style ...
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
More ironic than erotic, Fifty Shades Of Grey at least improves on the book. Let's get this out of the way—those going into Fifty Shades Of Grey expecting an erotic experience are going to be ...
"Fifty Shades of Grey" Review
On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could ...
Fifty Shades of Grey Is Not About Sex—and It's Surprisingly Good
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, l-r: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, 2015. ph: Chuck Zlotnick/©Focus Features/courtesy Everett Collection Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/© Focus Features/Everett Collection
'Fifty Shades of Grey' Movie Review
He's a human Ken doll with a kinky set of accessories that go unused. Don't want to frighten the little girls of all ages and sexes who will line up to see this sanitized swill. A few early ...
Movie Review: 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
February 13, 2015, 8:40 am. -- Starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Rated - R. Two-and-a-half out of five stars. I had zero interest in reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" or writing a review comparing the movie to the book. Now, if someone tied me to a bedpost and forced me to read it while lightly flogging me with Cinnabons, I'd be so into ...
Fifty Shades of Grey
In Fifty Shades of Grey' s most brutal scene, Christian—driven by a compulsion even he can't understand—decides he must "punish" Ana. He forces the naked girl to bend over and begins hitting her with a belt, telling her to count as the blows land. "One," she says softly after the first.
Review: 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
The bulk of "Fifty Shades of Grey" presents a world ruled by a helicopter-flying gym rat raised on a steady diet of "9 1/2 Weeks," Zalman King's soft-core cable fantasies and fashion ...
Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Review: Laughable but Hot
And then there's Christian's solemn promise: "I don't make love. I f—k. Hard .". This is the movie you're paying to see when you pick up a Fifty Shades of Grey ticket. It's ...
Fifty Shades of Grey (film)
Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2015 American erotic romantic drama film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson from a screenplay by Kelly Marcel.The film is based on E. L. James' 2011 novel of the same name and stars Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle and Marcia Gay Harden.It is the first installment in the Fifty Shades film series.The story follows Anastasia "Ana" Steele (Johnson), a college ...
'Fifty Shades of Grey' Review: Not Kinky, Not Interesting
It couldn't possibly be as bad as the book. And, indeed, director Sam Taylor-Johnson's adaptation is not nearly as painful an experience as E. L. James's novel. The author's sub-leaden ...
Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Reviews
Fifty Shades of Grey Critic Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. Learn more. Review Submitted. GOT IT. Offers SEE ALL OFFERS. BUY 2 TICKETS, GET 1 FREE image link ...
Fifty Shades Star Explains His Reaction To Movie's Negative Reviews
Published Jan 30, 2024. Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan details his reaction to the movie's widespread negative reviews, as the film sparked online vitriol. Summary. Jamie Dornan "hid " and shut himself off from the world after negative reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey affected him. Despite being critically panned, the Fifty Shades movies ...
Fifty Shades Of Grey review
The playroom interludes aren't the only thing that's slick and soulless. Like the book, the film is clearly intended as wish-fulfilment fantasy: the camera pervs over Grey's hotel-like home ...
'Ripley' Netflix series review: Andrew Scott consummately nails 50
We are then taken to New York in the 1960s where Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) living in a grimy apartment, is perpetuating petty cons. When a detective comes looking for him, he first thinks the law ...

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