Fifty shades of grey meander movie#

Fifty shades of grey meander movie#

The movie also doesn't meander the way the book does, although for those keeping score at home, Christian doesn't administer his first spanking until the 1:40 mark of this two-hour tumble.Īna seems less of a little girl lost here, in part due to Johnson's convincing performance, although that annoying lip-biting habit remains and the dear lamb seems to have no idea what a butt plug is used for. Wisely dispensing with voice-over narrative, they've excised the 'holy crap!' and 'oh my' expletives that litter Ana's first-person account in the book (although Christian's bizarre 'Laters, baby!' remains). They had an almost impossible task, trying to create a soft-porn romance that would arouse everyone while offending no one. Banks') deserve considerable credit for turning James' risible drivel into something resembling an adult romance, if not a mature one.

In fact, director Sam Taylor-Johnson ('Nowhere Boy') and screenwriter Kelly Marcel ('Saving Mr. It sets up the story for multiple sequels rather than being a single satisfying movie.īut it's not a disaster. Something along the lines, say, of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in 'His Girl Friday' or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in 'You've Got Mail.'Īlas, 'Fifty Shades of Grey' also aspires to make a big weepy statement, the familiar one about the good girl redeeming the naughty boy who swears he can't feel love, but it fails in that regard as well. If this movie wasn't trying so desperately to shock and offend, this alpha male versus feisty female conceit could be remounted as a screwball comedy. The cat o' nine tails he wields in his 'Red Room of Pain' is one tame tabby, and when he speaks of being 'bone-twitchingly mad' at Ana for her disobedient behaviour, he barely seems peeved. He looks younger, softer and considerably less menacing than the Olympian figure of purple prose, described as having 'unfathomable grey eyes.' She looks older and more experienced than the virginal college student of the E.L. Most problematic is the pairing of relative unknowns Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan as Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, the submissive/dominant duo of the story about a Seattle billionaire seeking to explore his violent sexual fetishes with a compliant female. There are fragrance commercials with more bedroom heat than this.Ĭuriosity will have 'Fifty Shades' fans flocking to multiplexes this weekend but disappointment will in all likelihood be sending them home.

The sex scenes are so bland, the film could almost be shown on aircraft as is. Vainly seeking to reach the widest possible audience, the makers of this exercise in banality stripped it of almost anything that could cause offence. The film is McKinky for the masses, with lots of nudity (mostly female), but very little of the erotic punishment explored in the book. A pulpy sex novel becomes a surprisingly conventional romance as 'mommy porn' phenomenon 'Fifty Shades of Grey' slides onto the silver screen.