You can watch my youtube review HERE!!!
I don't think 50 Shades of Grey needs much introduction but if you have been living in a hole for the past few years or actually living a fulfilling life I'll give you a quick briefing. 50 Shades of Grey started as Twilight fan fiction, then one day E.L. James transferred her fantasies into a book (with some name changes) and it exploded like an atomic bomb that attracts money and kills brain cells. The book now adapted for the screen under director Sam Taylor-Johnson with the lovely Dakota Johnson in the lead and Jamie Dornan as every woman's abusive fantasy.
The main draw of the novel of the was James' description which I can't say was well written, in fact I'd say is rather insane but for some reason the women of the world found to be exciting. But the thing is, when to take written text and transfer it to a visual medium you lose all that description that stimulated the imagination. So with that out of the film does it really hold up? 50 Shades as a film has always been rather gimmicky to begin with; you can basically call it the BDSM movie or Porn for people who don't know how to find their way around the internet. I'll comment on those scenes briefly but really I'm just going to talk about hos it actually works as a...movie.
Once you take away the sex scenes and the fact that the movie is called 50 Shades of Grey it's really just a very simple romance story; a rather unoriginal, dull and mediocre romance story but a romance story nonetheless. The film follows college senior Anastasia Steele (Johnson) as she meets and develops a relationship with young billionaire Christian Grey (Dornan) who has a dark past and even darker pleasures. There really isn't anything special about this story, it really could have been any romance script with just some added BDSM, the fact that it's called 50 Shades of Grey really just gets butts in the seats.
Now the film is actually well made, Sam Taylor-Johnson knows how to put things together with Seamus McGarvey who is a great cinematographer and Danny Elfman's score is quite fantastic while being very different from what he has done before. Dakota Johnson is actually quite good in her role even though the dialogue is quite terrible and cliché but Jamie Dornan on the other hand is as bland as a block of raw tofu. There has been much debate as the whether the film and book are misogynist; it's written by a woman, it's biggest fans are women but it features a rather abusive relationship. When you take the ending of the film into account I don't think it really is misogynist but the character of Christian Grey is still an abusive man...and that is apparently appealing to women.
I actually think if the film wasn't trying to be faithful to the source material and had a script that took the basic outline and actually explored the idea it could have been a decent film. Really it just needed to be fresher and have much better dialogue. I was expecting this to be absolutely terrible and was hoping for another Showgirls situation but I was surprised that I didn't hate it. I definitely don't think it's good in fact I was bored throughout the whole film save for some comedic moments both intentional and unintentional. Really, having seen the film I just don't really get what the big deal is from either points of view; it's just a well made but boringly told film that really has nothing going for it especially when you can find much racier things in foreign films.
2 1/2 out of 5 stars.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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