STAY OUT OF THE SHADE
It’s bland and boring
Fifty Shades of Grey is every bit as purely fantastical as the Twilight books upon which it was initially based. So let’s just ignore its more garden-variety absurdities: Insanely rich, spectacularly abbed business magnates who apparently have enough time and desire to chase nondescript, reluctant women are roughly as prevalent as vegetarian vampires.
So too is the fact that Anastasia Steele is basically a transparent outline of a human being. The porniest thing about this movie is that two people whose inner lives stop at the costume choices are almost immediately intent on having sex.
Ana (Dakota Johnson) provokes a life-changing obsession in Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan, who delivers lines like a robot learning English) because she asks one personal question and likes Thomas Hardy.
The really ridiculous thing about this movie is that it’s an erotic thriller that is profoundly unsexy. From its overarching stalker vibe to its tepid sex scenes, it roils with all the unbridled passion of used bathwater. It tries to show how sexy it is to be tied up and lightly flogged, but it also seems to treat the desire like it could come only from a diseased mind. It passes beyond titillatingly bad-but-good and on to a frowning schoolmarm who is just going to put this wooden ruler into a locked drawer, thank you.
That’s probably because, as much as sex, the object of the movie’s obsession is business (and the material goods its capable execution can acquire). The plot, such as there is one, centres around ANA’s signing of Christian’s detailed submission contract. And the closest the movie gets to hot involves that contract: “F--k the paperwork,” says Grey, with all the passion of a TGIF-ing middle manager, as he puts Ana up against an elevator wall for their first kiss.
The actual contract negation, in a suggestively lit conference room, provokes the most chemistry these two display. Christian’s promises of what he’s going to do after they sign it would be downright steamy if he didn’t appear to be reading it off cue cards: “I’ll. Bend. You. Over. This. Table.”
This affects how the sex is depicted, too: Director Sam Taylor-Johnson seems as interested in Christian’s expensivelooking cuffs and ropes as in how he uses them. Ana’s skin, the true sexy part, is untouched by these bindings.
I can only assume that the books are far more interested in the sex than in the toys — because a world where something as resolutely bland and boring as this movie is a worldwide erotic phenomenon is too depressing to consider. If this movie gets your crank turning, you need to take that thing out for a spin far more often.