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Fifty Shades of Grey:
We as a society are about two months away from watching Fifty Shades of Grey be declared an Academy Award nominee. As painful as it might seem to have that distinction on a sticker on the DVD cover or in the trailer for the upcoming sequel, Fifty Shades of Grey has one of the best soundtracks of the year. It almost certainly will, and in my opinion it should, be recognized for that. 3 pop stars contributed original songs: Sia's Salted Wound, Ellie Goulding's Love Me Like You Do, and The Weeknd's Earned It. I love all of these, especially the last one, and the latter two both charted in the top 5 in radio airplay and sales. The soundtrack is further helped by Beyonce's dedication to remixing some of her old songs to fit the tone and tempo that the film is going for, best done for Crazy In Love. This will get more awards recognition than critical hits like Ex Machina, It Follows, and Mission Impossible. Accept it now to avoid frustration later.
In spite of being that movie adapted from that Twilight fanfiction that's basically porn, which everybody decided to hate without watching it, Fifty Shades is a passable film. The thirsty housewife audience of the books might be disappointed with the relative tameness and lack of spectacle. The story of billionaire Christian Grey seducing student Anastasia Steele for his BDSM desires remains mostly intact (I'm assuming, having never read the books), but everybody keeps their clothes on for the entire first third of the movie. Grey is never shown naked below the chest. Sex takes up maybe 10 minutes of the 2 hour run time. What happens in between those scenes is a mediocre drama that has quite a few points of merit and does not deserve the critical thrashing it received.
As you could probably expect being a romance movie, there are 2 actors who get anything to do. Dakota Johnson is actually quite good as Anastasia, or at least as good as the script allows her to be. She has some good expression acting, using scared glances and lip bites to convey layers that author of the books and writer of the screenplay EL James isn't smart enough to. I think she has a future in serious roles, and this gave her a lot of money, so some good definitely came out of this film. Jamie Dornan as Christian is a lot less proficient. He has one tone of voice no matter what situation he finds himself in. He sounds stiff when delivering his lines, like a male Siri system or an English dubbing of a foreign person talking on the news. The most important part of a romance movie is the chemistry between the two leads, so one of the worst parts of this movie is their complete lack of any. Anastasia never feels like she's happy, and honestly Christian makes whipping her sound more like a job than a fun distraction. You could argue that might be his character as the work-obsessed rich man, and so it is only natural that his persona in the board room would carry over to the bedroom, but it isn't enjoyable to watch.
I'm hesitant to blame Dornan too much because this script is just atrocious. To put things simply, EL James has no idea how to write dialogue. I'm not even sure what she's trying to do sometimes. I'll hear a line and wonder whether that was intended to be funny or hot, because whichever it was it failed miserably. The lines are bad in a variety of ways, too. A lot of the romantic lines are bad because they're so cliched. There's a "look at me!" "I am!" exchange, guaranteed to force an audible groan out of any viewer. A lot of the 'deep and complex' one liners are bad because they are the stupidest thing ever put on a page and will probably earn many unintentional laughs. "Why are you changing me?" "You're the one that's changing me" was a riot. "Rope and tape? Ha, you're the complete serial killer" immediately followed by a 100% serious "Not today" is hilarious. "I'm fifty shades of ****ed up" is an incoherent mess of a line that has absolutely no real meaning if you think about it, which makes it an awesome line destined to be shouted back at midnight screenings in an over the top voice. In some ways these bad lines help the movie out. My rating is based almost entirely on how much I enjoyed a movie. That's why The Room is my favorite movie ever made. Intentional or not, I had more fun laughing at this than I had laughing with most recent comedies. The worst lines, or the bad lines I enjoyed the least, were the constant telling of character traits instead of showing. Christian does nothing in their first encounter. I'm still trying to get a feel for his character. Anastasia tells us as an audience that "He was polite. Intense. Smart. Very intimidating." Her roommate is an exposition machine in the sense that she only exists for Anastasia to give exposition to. It's nice to establish everything there is to know about his personality in 5 seconds, but it's fun to be challenged. Sometimes it can be a good thing to let Christian's actions express his intelligence and intensity instead of giving us the SparkNotes summary.
The movie's real problems come in the middle hour. All of the funny lines come in the beginning or ending, and the middle act is repetitive nonsense that fails to move the story forward in any way. The middle is also the longest part, taking up more than half of the movie, forced to adjust from a rushed ending made to set up the sequels. Christian does something creepy or acts like a stalker, Anastasia has internal doubts but goes with it, they have sex, Anastasia hates him. This 20 minute cycle gets to happen 3 times, and even the ending is basically this with some more things happening around it as bells and whistles. As much as I would like to play it up as a future cult movie, I think it's too boring to get played at those midnight showings. It's bad storytelling for sure. This is a personal preference, but I would usually rather watch an actively bad movie with a lot of things happening than a boring one. The former is something to talk about, at least.
The production values are surprisingly okay. It is well shot. The cinematography was done by two time Oscar nominee Seamus McGarvey. I think even people who hate this film with a passion will concede that it looks nice. The production design is competent. Nothing stands out, but that means nothing was especially cheesy. It could have easily skimped on the budget and looked like porn, but it is presented like a legitimate movie. The sound and lighting crew put a lot of effort into making this technically decent. I'm not sure how much of the target audience for a Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation cares about sound design, but this looked like a serious film, in a stark contrast to the Lifetime-esque world of Nicholas Sparks' adaptations. This isn't a movie that I would watch again, nor is it one I would recommend that other people watch, but its bad reputation is mostly undeserved. Other than the pathetic excuse for a script there's nothing really wrong with this film, and a few things worked well. I can't go as far as to call it a good movie, but I think "underrated" describes it quite well.
Fifty Shades of Grey:
We as a society are about two months away from watching Fifty Shades of Grey be declared an Academy Award nominee. As painful as it might seem to have that distinction on a sticker on the DVD cover or in the trailer for the upcoming sequel, Fifty Shades of Grey has one of the best soundtracks of the year. It almost certainly will, and in my opinion it should, be recognized for that. 3 pop stars contributed original songs: Sia's Salted Wound, Ellie Goulding's Love Me Like You Do, and The Weeknd's Earned It. I love all of these, especially the last one, and the latter two both charted in the top 5 in radio airplay and sales. The soundtrack is further helped by Beyonce's dedication to remixing some of her old songs to fit the tone and tempo that the film is going for, best done for Crazy In Love. This will get more awards recognition than critical hits like Ex Machina, It Follows, and Mission Impossible. Accept it now to avoid frustration later.
In spite of being that movie adapted from that Twilight fanfiction that's basically porn, which everybody decided to hate without watching it, Fifty Shades is a passable film. The thirsty housewife audience of the books might be disappointed with the relative tameness and lack of spectacle. The story of billionaire Christian Grey seducing student Anastasia Steele for his BDSM desires remains mostly intact (I'm assuming, having never read the books), but everybody keeps their clothes on for the entire first third of the movie. Grey is never shown naked below the chest. Sex takes up maybe 10 minutes of the 2 hour run time. What happens in between those scenes is a mediocre drama that has quite a few points of merit and does not deserve the critical thrashing it received.
As you could probably expect being a romance movie, there are 2 actors who get anything to do. Dakota Johnson is actually quite good as Anastasia, or at least as good as the script allows her to be. She has some good expression acting, using scared glances and lip bites to convey layers that author of the books and writer of the screenplay EL James isn't smart enough to. I think she has a future in serious roles, and this gave her a lot of money, so some good definitely came out of this film. Jamie Dornan as Christian is a lot less proficient. He has one tone of voice no matter what situation he finds himself in. He sounds stiff when delivering his lines, like a male Siri system or an English dubbing of a foreign person talking on the news. The most important part of a romance movie is the chemistry between the two leads, so one of the worst parts of this movie is their complete lack of any. Anastasia never feels like she's happy, and honestly Christian makes whipping her sound more like a job than a fun distraction. You could argue that might be his character as the work-obsessed rich man, and so it is only natural that his persona in the board room would carry over to the bedroom, but it isn't enjoyable to watch.
I'm hesitant to blame Dornan too much because this script is just atrocious. To put things simply, EL James has no idea how to write dialogue. I'm not even sure what she's trying to do sometimes. I'll hear a line and wonder whether that was intended to be funny or hot, because whichever it was it failed miserably. The lines are bad in a variety of ways, too. A lot of the romantic lines are bad because they're so cliched. There's a "look at me!" "I am!" exchange, guaranteed to force an audible groan out of any viewer. A lot of the 'deep and complex' one liners are bad because they are the stupidest thing ever put on a page and will probably earn many unintentional laughs. "Why are you changing me?" "You're the one that's changing me" was a riot. "Rope and tape? Ha, you're the complete serial killer" immediately followed by a 100% serious "Not today" is hilarious. "I'm fifty shades of ****ed up" is an incoherent mess of a line that has absolutely no real meaning if you think about it, which makes it an awesome line destined to be shouted back at midnight screenings in an over the top voice. In some ways these bad lines help the movie out. My rating is based almost entirely on how much I enjoyed a movie. That's why The Room is my favorite movie ever made. Intentional or not, I had more fun laughing at this than I had laughing with most recent comedies. The worst lines, or the bad lines I enjoyed the least, were the constant telling of character traits instead of showing. Christian does nothing in their first encounter. I'm still trying to get a feel for his character. Anastasia tells us as an audience that "He was polite. Intense. Smart. Very intimidating." Her roommate is an exposition machine in the sense that she only exists for Anastasia to give exposition to. It's nice to establish everything there is to know about his personality in 5 seconds, but it's fun to be challenged. Sometimes it can be a good thing to let Christian's actions express his intelligence and intensity instead of giving us the SparkNotes summary.
The movie's real problems come in the middle hour. All of the funny lines come in the beginning or ending, and the middle act is repetitive nonsense that fails to move the story forward in any way. The middle is also the longest part, taking up more than half of the movie, forced to adjust from a rushed ending made to set up the sequels. Christian does something creepy or acts like a stalker, Anastasia has internal doubts but goes with it, they have sex, Anastasia hates him. This 20 minute cycle gets to happen 3 times, and even the ending is basically this with some more things happening around it as bells and whistles. As much as I would like to play it up as a future cult movie, I think it's too boring to get played at those midnight showings. It's bad storytelling for sure. This is a personal preference, but I would usually rather watch an actively bad movie with a lot of things happening than a boring one. The former is something to talk about, at least.
The production values are surprisingly okay. It is well shot. The cinematography was done by two time Oscar nominee Seamus McGarvey. I think even people who hate this film with a passion will concede that it looks nice. The production design is competent. Nothing stands out, but that means nothing was especially cheesy. It could have easily skimped on the budget and looked like porn, but it is presented like a legitimate movie. The sound and lighting crew put a lot of effort into making this technically decent. I'm not sure how much of the target audience for a Fifty Shades of Grey adaptation cares about sound design, but this looked like a serious film, in a stark contrast to the Lifetime-esque world of Nicholas Sparks' adaptations. This isn't a movie that I would watch again, nor is it one I would recommend that other people watch, but its bad reputation is mostly undeserved. Other than the pathetic excuse for a script there's nothing really wrong with this film, and a few things worked well. I can't go as far as to call it a good movie, but I think "underrated" describes it quite well.