50 shades of grey movie review

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Fifty Shades of Grey

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Watch Fifty Shades of Grey with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

While creatively better endowed than its print counterpart, Fifty Shades of Grey is a less than satisfying experience on the screen.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Sam Taylor-Johnson

Dakota Johnson

Anastasia Steele

Jamie Dornan

Christian Grey

Jennifer Ehle

Eloise Mumford

Victor Rasuk

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Fifty shades of grey, common sense media reviewers.

Lackluster take on best seller is extremely graphic.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

A key takeaway is to develop a strong sense of sel

Ana's roommate encourages her to take things slow

Although their activities are consensual, Christia

Like the book, the movie includes several explicit

Many uses of "f--k," both in the sexual sense and

Featured brands (some very prominently) include Au

Lots of wine drinking throughout the movie (and in

Positive Messages

A key takeaway is to develop a strong sense of self esteem so you don't compromise in your relationships. Although Ana starts the movie insecure and upset, she ends it knowing what she does and doesn't want out of her romantic relationship with Christian.

Positive Role Models

Ana's roommate encourages her to take things slow and "at her own pace" with Christian; Ana starts the movie as an insecure virgin but later discovers her own boundaries, desires, and limits when it comes to a sexual relationship.

Violence & Scariness

Although their activities are consensual, Christian spanks and hits Ana, usually too lightly to be truly painful but still hard enough to leave a mark. In one scene, Christian hits Ana (with her consent) six times so hard that she cries and leaves, horrified and upset.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Like the book, the movie includes several explicit sex scenes with nearly full-frontal nudity (always breasts and buttocks, and occasionally shots of pubic hair, too). Most of the sex scenes (all of which show Christian opening a condom) involve the use of Christian's ties, eye masks, and other sex toys/bondage aides like whips, chains, handcuffs, ropes, and feathers. Christian and Anastasia walk in on her roommate having sex on a couch; she's wearing a negligee, and her partner's jeans are pushed down under his butt.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Many uses of "f--k," both in the sexual sense and as a declaration; also "s--t," "a--hole," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Featured brands (some very prominently) include Audi, Mercedes, LG, Apple iPhone, MacBook Pro, Volvo, and the Heathman Hotel.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Lots of wine drinking throughout the movie (and incorporated into one sex scene). Ana gets drunk (having shots) at a club and "drunk dials" Christian.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Fifty Shades of Grey is the sexually explicit adaptation of the best-selling erotic novel by E.L. James (which began its life as Twilight fan fiction). It shouldn't surprise anyone who has read or heard about the popular book (and its sequels) that it's not at all appropriate for teens and features an unhealthy relationship between an inexperienced college graduate and a 27-year-old billionaire with a bondage/dominant-submissive (BDSM) fetish. The adults-only drama is filled with graphic sex scenes, most of which include close-up shots of naked breasts, buttocks, and even glimpses of genitalia (though they're all just shy of being completely "full frontal"). Although the sex scenes are consensual, many involve hitting and being tied up, and there's a potentially disturbing scene in which Christian "punishes" Anastasia, hurting her so much she weeps. The language is also strong, with words like "f--k," "s--t," and "a--hole" used frequently, and there's frequent drinking and lots of brand/product placement. Note: This review is of the R-rated version of the film shown in theaters, not the unrated cut released on DVD; the latter contains additional mature content. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (48)
Kids say (145)

Based on 48 parent reviews

Why man why

If this is shown to anyone under 18 that's child abuse, what's the story.

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. After purposely bumping into her a couple more times, Christian reveals that he'd like Anastasia to sign a contract to engage in a dominant-submissive sexual relationship with him. But Anastasia, a virgin, has no idea what she's comfortable with until they start an intense sexual affair that makes both of them question everything they thought about relationships.

Is It Any Good?

It's all relative, of course, but this movie is infinitely better than the poorly written book it's based on, which is a best-seller because of the naughty bits, rather than the prose. As expected, the script nixes some of the book's more cringe-inducing elements (no "inner goddess" or constant exclamations of "Geez") while staying faithful to the minimalist storyline. Johnson is actually quite good as Anastasia, giving her the right amount of vulnerability and curiosity, but Dornan is nothing more than scowling eye-candy. He doesn't have a commanding enough presence to be believable in his role, though at least he's got the brooding right. While the pair generates more heat than the negative press about them would suggest, it's not nearly enough to merit the third of the movie they spend having or talking about sex.

In fact, Fifty Shades of Grey 's best moments have no nudity in them at all: an innuendo-filled conversation in the hardware store where Ana works, for example; or a silly drunken phone call; or the early part of a "business meeting" to negotiate what Anastasia will and won't do with Christian. The sex is shot in such extreme close-ups that audiences might find themselves unintentionally laughing at the contrast between Johnson's unwavering enthusiasm and Dornan's look of sheer boredom or disinterest. Devoted fans of James' trilogy will be thrilled to know that the studio has committed to making all three of the books into movies, while those who were expecting an utter disaster will have to settle for an "erotic movie" with a soundtrack that's sexier than its storyline.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how sex is depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey . Is the central sexual relationship in the story a healthy one? Why, or why not? Parents, talk to your teens about your own values regarding sex and relationships.

Why do you think this book and movie are so popular? Is it an appropriate story for teens? The author began her tale as Twilight fan fiction; can you see any of Edward and Bella in these characters and their relationship?

Does the fact that the characters' relationship is consensual make everything they do together OK? What sets their activities apart from abuse/domestic violence?

Are any of the characters intended to be role models? Are they sympathetic? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 13, 2015
On DVD or streaming : May 8, 2015
Cast : Dakota Johnson , Jamie Dornan , Eloise Mumford
Director : Sam Taylor-Johnson
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors
Studio : Focus Features
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 125 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : strong sexual content including dialogue, some unusual behavior and graphic nudity, and for language
Last updated : April 22, 2024

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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 Is Tamer Than You Might Think, But It’s a Lot Better, Too

By Richard Lawson

This image may contain Human Person Hair Dating and Hand

What a fun, sexy time young Anastasia Steele is having in Fifty Shades of Grey , director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s surprisingly winning adaptation of the runaway Twilight -fan-fiction-turned-bondage-fantasy novel. Anastasia, or Ana, is about to graduate from college when she meets a seriously handsome young billionaire with whom she shares an immediate, intense connection. She’s stepping into the real world and, hey, here’s this gorgeous playboy waiting to welcome her. And so the movie progresses for most of its tidy run, Ana and her billionaire, Christian Grey, treating sex as conversation, he showing her what he knows he’s into, while she, newly not a virgin, figures out what she likes for the first time. The two are polite and witty and even cute with one another, a genuine romance bubbling up underneath all the smooth seduction. The movie has a refreshing, friendly, youthful energy; it’s exciting, and excited, and, for the most part, pretty sex-positive.

Which was, well, kinda shocking to me, as someone who hasn’t read E.L. James’s sex-filled tome, but certainly has heard a lot about it. Like the character who inspired her, Twilight ’s Bella Swan, I expected Ana to be meek and featureless and utterly passive, a blank, empty vessel for readers’ and viewers’ sexual and romantic longings. And I suppose Ana is that, a little bit. But in the movie, she’s also funny and expressive and centered, not sapped of agency as it seemed she might be, not the timid, self-sacrificing mouse of so many melodramas of this ilk. Credit to Kelly Marcel , who wrote the screenplay, for that, and of course to Taylor-Johnson, who stages this beloved, closely held material with a respectful but not obsequious smile. But it’s Dakota Johnson , playing Anastasia, who really brings her to life. Yes, Johnson is beautiful—bright and dewy but not exactly innocent—but she’s also a smart, intuitive performer, perfectly calibrating tone and tempo as she navigates the film, which, plot-wise, is a little less schematic than you might think.

Meaning, not much happens in Fifty Shades of Grey . Anastasia meets Christian while interviewing him for her college newspaper. They flirt, he pushes away, she pulls in, they finally do it, and then they do it a bunch more times. There’s a slight narrative arc as we near the film’s hilariously ballsy end, but mostly this is a movie about interior, nonlinear things. As Johnson plays it, it’s a movie about curiosity, and the giddy release of letting go. That Anastasia is able to let go with a dead-sexy billionaire who looks like Jamie Dornan is, of course, the stuff of movie luck—the fantasy is not that Anastasia has slightly kinky sex, but who she has it with. (Which may be a small point, but I think it makes a difference!) Johnson and Dornan have nice chemistry together, he the leonine predator and she the trembling doe, except he’s pretty gentle and she’s tougher than she looks.

On the whole, Fifty Shades is a lot tamer than it could have been. Which is good in some ways, as it allows for the movie to be as playful as it is. Ana and Christian’s sexual exchange genuinely feels like a game, one they are playing equitably, both turned on and eager to see what happens next. Ana is cautious about Christian’s proposal, that she sign a contract and officially become his submissive for an undisclosed period of time, but she’s not outright frightened, she’s not trapped or railroaded. Because this is pretty light bondage we’re ultimately talking about here, the game is airy and low-stakes, a post-graduate period of sexual exploration that seems healthy and safe.

But, of course, if the sex were more intense, Fifty Shades might actually become the transgressive sex fable it kind of wants to be, one that genuinely challenges our square notions of what is and isn’t deviant sex, that questions our perhaps rigid ideas of how power dynamics should function in a relationship. Free of full-frontal nudity and excessive thrusting and, well, orgasming as this movie is, it never gets to that envelope-pushing place. Which I suspect will disappoint many people, understandably. Oh well. Maybe I’m a sex-shaming prude, but I didn’t mind getting the less explicit version, because the movie is at its best when it keeps things swift and light.

When the movie does slow down and get serious toward the end, the romantic push and pull gets repetitive, and the literary limits of the source material begin to poke through. (The film’s title is sort of explained in one unbelievably bad line.) Dornan, a god on Earth with a wobbly American accent, is forced to play the same notes over and over again. Which I don’t mind watching him do, but he begins to seem bored. The film’s plotlessness becomes a burden in the last 20 or so minutes, when something like a climax is needed but all the film can muster is yet another argument. And then there’s that ending—a wicked little fake-out cliffhanger that many audiences are going to hate, but, man, you have to at least respect the studio’s moxie. It's outright demanding that you go see the sequel, and you know what? I will.

Fifty Shades of Grey is not the lame, hot-and-bothered fantasy romance many, including myself, thought it would be. It’s got wit and humor and a modest intelligence about human behavior that, say, the Twilight movies never had. And there’s something almost sweetly nostalgic about it. In one scene (reminiscent of the flight-as-foreplay sequence in The Thomas Crown Affair ), Christian pilots a glider with Anastasia as his passenger. He does barrel rolls as Taylor-Johnson’s camera swoops along behind them, one of her many spot-on music choices—all either thumping or dreamy—swelling and soaring. And we see Anastasia, awed and thrilled, in the cockpit, sky and earth swirling around her, young and free and reveling in all this beautiful risk. What a swoony, perfectly lovely way for a recent grad to greet the rest of her life, occasional rough landings and all. Oh, if only 22 had been that exciting for all of us.

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Review: Fifty Shades of Grey: Where’s the Wicked Whiplash?

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

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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'Fifty Shades of Grey': EW movie review

Breaking news: Many people race through the book Fifty Shades of Grey for the pictures—the pictures in our heads. Author E L James may not be much of a prose stylist, but she can write an effectively dirty, hot, easy-to-read, complicated-to-accessorize sex scene when she puts her mind to it. James throws in descriptions of bondage, submission, foreplay, cosmic orgasms, private helicopters, and fine white wine. And minus the boring bits about private helicopters and tedious wine -sipping, it’s all tatty, arousing fun. Mind-boggling book sales for James’ enthusiastic efforts, especially among mature, self-actualized women, suggest that I am not alone in my private enjoyment of such engorged, erotic semi-literature.

The movie Fifty Shades of Grey is considerably better written than the book. It is also sort of classy-looking, in a generic, TV-ad-for-bath-oil way. Dakota Johnson, who plays the virgin English-literature major Anastasia Steele, and Jamie Dornan, who plays Christian Grey, the wildly rich and sexually…particular business titan who wants Miss Steele in his playroom, are exceedingly attractive actors with enviably supple bodies well suited to nakedness. And really, under the circumstances, movable parts matter more than acting skills.

The production is also oddly sedate—the most polite aspirational romance between a screwed-up prince and girlish princess ever to include loving close-ups of dominance-and-submission sex toys. Presumably the look-but-don’t-pant tone of the storytelling was negotiated among the book’s author, director Sam (as in Samantha) Taylor-Johnson, screenwriter Kelly Marcel, and various producers and studio types; the movie version appears to be aimed at a younger consumer crowd than -the readers (albeit a crowd qualified for R-rated entertainment). In any event, the result is confounding, leaving both those coming to the Fifty Shades phenomenon for the first time as well as those who have read the book to wonder, for different reasons, Where’s the beef?

I don’t think this is entirely the inevitable result of coaxing an R-rated movie out of an X-rated book. True, nobody in the movie has visible genitals; Christian in particular seems to do a whole lot of stuff in the playroom with his shirt off but his pants on, which cannot be comfortable for such an active young man. But even more frustrating to voyeurs, nobody sweats, nobody strains, nobody loses control or even fakes losing control by simulating an orgasm. Also—and this is a turnoff—every time a sex scene comes on, some lady starts singing a big, whooshy Sex Scene song. Hello, Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding, Sia, Jessie Ware, Skylar Grey.

On the other hand, when dressed, the two stars look clean, smartly groomed, and ready for their fashion-magazine tie-ins. Johnson, with her indefinably French look à la Charlotte Gainsbourg, is particularly lovely, conveying a welcome flash of wit and self-awareness missing from the book. (Not once in the movie does Anastasia say “Holy crap!”) The production design subtly reinforces the title in everything from the color gradations of the sky to the wardrobe of the sleek office babes on Christian’s payroll. It’s a kick to see the fine actors Jennifer Ehle and Marcia Gay Harden play the young couple’s respective mothers. I spoil nothing by reporting what readers already know, that when Fifty Shades is not a dirty story, it is, as the trilogy unfolds, a study in cartoonishly weird family dynamics.

Readers also know the thrill of secret arousal—the power to privately reread the scenes that get their motor running (or helicopter flying) and skip the dull pages. This perfectly normal way of consuming erotica suggests that the movie Fifty Shades of Grey will work better as home entertainment, when each viewer can race past the blah-blah about how well Christian plays the piano and pause on the fleeting image of the man minus his pants. B–

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Review: In ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Movie, Sex Is a Knotty Business

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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 of dialogue (“Anastasia!” “Christian!”) and the first breathy notes of the last Beyoncé song — a lot of the audience burst out laughing. The source of that laughter continues to puzzle and intrigue me, perhaps more than the actual movie did. Was it delight? Derision? Embarrassment? Surprise? All of the above?

The last answer seems the most likely, since Sam Taylor-Johnson’s screen adaptation of E. L. James’s best seller is, like the book itself, a wildly confused treatment of a perennial confusing subject. Sex is a knotty business, perhaps all the more so when actual knots are involved, as they tend to be in the world of Christian Grey, the kinky billionaire bachelor who lends his name and his impressive collection of neckties to this Seattle-set tale of seduction, submission and commodity fetishism.

Christian has a lot of psychic baggage, but for most of this installment in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, it’s obscured by his physical stuff. In the tradition of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby, James Franco’s Alien (from “Spring Breakers”) and Kanye West’s Kanye West, this young mogul (played by Jamie Dornan) treats luxury consumption as an erotic passion and a spiritual calling. He has his own helicopter, which he pilots himself; an underground garage full of cars with a chauffeur to drive them; a penthouse apartment with a grand piano; and a walk-in closet so big that his suits hang without even touching.

There’s also another room where he keeps his collection of canes, cuffs and other specialized equipment. Early in their relationship, he gives a tour to Anastasia Steele, his young inamorata, played with captivating sensitivity by Dakota Johnson. “That’s a flogger,” he explains, in one of several moments in Kelly Marcel’s script that sound a little redundant, and more than a little silly, when uttered on screen.

Movie Review: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

The times critic a. o. scott reviews “fifty shades of grey.”.

Anastasia’s portion of the dialogue is more likely to be funny on purpose. Critics of Ms. James’s books have called attention to Ana’s habit of exclaiming “Wow!” and “Holy crap!” when a more heightened vocabulary (or no words at all) might seem to be called for. But the energy that brings her and Christian together is comic as well as sexual. She’s an ordinary, guileless, somewhat clueless young woman — kind of basic, as they say nowadays — pulled into the orbit of an enigmatic aristocrat with peculiar tastes and dark secrets. Their first meeting takes place in his office, where Anastasia, with her messy bangs and shapeless blue cardigan, looks absurdly out of place amid the sleek corporate Valkyries. “Fifty Shades” may have begun as “Twilight” fan fiction, but Ms. Taylor-Johnson wittily notes its kinship with “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Not that professional ambition plays much of a role in Anastasia’s life. Or, for that matter, in Christian’s. He runs a big, vague company but doesn’t really seem to do much work. Ana is an English major who works part time in a hardware store, which is one of the places Christian shows up to surprise her. He’s always doing that — at a nightclub, at her apartment, at a hotel bar in Savannah, Ga., where she’s having a drink with her mom. It’s a little unnerving.

Mr. Dornan, given the job of inspiring lust, fascination and also maybe a tiny, thrilling frisson of fear, succeeds mainly in eliciting pity. In print, Christian is a blur and a blank — a screen onto which any given reader can project a customized masculine ideal. On the screen, he risks becoming just some guy, which is how Mr. Dornan plays him, without mischief or mystery. There are actors who might have given Christian a jolt of naughty, bossy life, most of them creatures of an earlier movie era. Cary Grant. William Powell. Paul Newman. Sean Connery if you wanted the roughness a little closer to the surface. Jamie Bell was a convincing dominant in Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac: Volume II,” though his character was more artisan than aristocrat.

Mr. Dornan has the bland affect of a model, by which I mean a figure made of balsa wood or Lego. What vitality “Fifty Shades of Grey” possesses belongs to Ms. Johnson, who is a champion lip-biter and no slouch at blushing, eye-rolling and trembling on the verge of tears. She’s a good actress, in other words, and Ms. Taylor-Johnson matches the colors and the visual texture — the chilly blues and pulsing reds, the drab daylight and the velvety dusk — to Anastasia’s moods and desires.

These are kind of a mess. The problem isn’t that she’s indecisive or conflicted or capricious, or that she reacts to Christian’s proposal of a formal, contractually established dominant-submissive relationship with ambivalence. Who wouldn’t? (And I’m not passing judgment on his lifestyle. It’s just that I have a strong bias against having sex with anyone who would use the word “incentivize” in conversation, as Christian does the very first time he and Anastasia lock eyes.) The problem is that as a character, Anastasia makes no sense. Her behavior has no logic, no pattern, no coherent set of causes or boundaries.

In the book, this hardly matters. In fact, it’s something of an asset. Anastasia’s inner life exists to fill the space between sex scenes, and her zigzagging responses to Christian’s proposals make the fantasy more inclusive while also providing an escape clause. “Fifty Shades” is both daring and conventional, falling back into traditional gender roles even as it plays with transgressive desires. Christian’s sexual tastes are intriguing to Anastasia, but they are also the result of emotional wounds that she sets herself the task of healing. He wants to take charge of her, and she wants to take care of him. She tolerates the kind of sex he wants, and even enjoys some of it, but what she really wants is something more, and she wants to make him want that, too. She loves him, but love in these tales functions less as an emotional ideal than as a literary safe word, a return ticket to the land of romance.

Reviewers have complained about Ms. James’s pedestrian prose, but the bad writing serves an important purpose. “Fifty Shades” not only destigmatizes kink, bringing bondage and spanking to airport bookstores and reading groups across the land. But it also, so to speak, de-sophisticates certain sexual practices, taking them out of the chateau and the boudoir and other fancy French places and planting them in the soil of Anglo-American banality. If E. L. James were a better writer, her books would be more — to use one of Anastasia’s favorite words — intimidating. And much less useful.

The movie is neither one of those things. It dabbles in romantic comedy and splashes around in melodrama, but the one thing it can’t be — the thing the novel so trashily and triumphantly is — is pornography. Ms. Taylor-Johnson’s sex scenes are not that much different from other R-rated sex scenes, though there are more of them and more hardware is involved. You know the routine: an arched neck, some curled toes, a buttock here, a breast there, a wisp of pubic hair, a muffled moan, another Beyoncé song. Maybe a riding crop for variety.

W.H. Auden once wrote that “the proof that pornography has no literary value is that, if one attempts to read it in any other way than as a sexual stimulus, to read it, say, as a psychological case-history of the author’s sexual fantasies, one is bored to tears.” In defiance of this irrefutable good sense, the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon has spawned innumerable kink-themed think pieces, though the analysis has dwelt less on Ms. James’s psyche than on the fantasies of the tens of millions of women who have bought her books. The writers transform their boredom into mockery and judgment as they circle around a tantalizing, perhaps frustrating question. Why do so many women read these novels, even though they have no literary value?

I’m no expert, but I can venture a guess: for fun. They seem to be the kind of books you can simultaneously have fun with, make fun of, trash and cherish and adapt to the pursuit of your own pleasures. Which brings me back to the laughter at the end of the sneak preview. “Fifty Shades of Grey” might not be a good movie — O.K., it’s a terrible movie — but it might nonetheless be a movie that feels good to see, whether you squirm or giggle or roll your eyes or just sit still and take your punishment.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Different strokes.

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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: A flaccid performance from Jamie Dornan reveals his best asset is his body - movie review

First-look review: the most erotic moment in sam taylor-wood's film was the sight of a skyscraper, according to our critic kaleem aftab, article bookmarked.

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

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Sam Taylor-Johnson ’s adaptation of British novelist EL James ' best-selling book is a tale of sexual desire versus romance. But it’s a shame that the central tale of human power games gets seriously bogged down by some clumsy stereotypes, underwritten secondary characters and plotting that would have seemed light in a teen romance.

The film's strongest moments are the sex scenes (which take up a total of 15 minutes) and the negotiations over what sexual practices are permissible in a nascent relationship.

Receiving its world premiere in Berlin ahead of going on release in the UK this weekend, Sam Taylor-Johnson's film opens, predictably, with an image of grey clouds of different hues - and the visual metaphors stay obvious.

Fifty Shades of Grey film stills

We witness English lit student Anastasia Steele ( Dakota Johnson ) arrive at the offices of billionaire Christian Grey ( Jamie Dornan ) and look skyward up at the long protruding lines of a tall skyscraper. It’s the closest thing to arousal in the film as the movie keeps within the confines of film classification boards by refusing to show genitalia and concentrating its gaze mainly on the female rather than male form.

Fifty Shades of Grey movie reviews round-up

Back when Taylor-Johnson was building her reputation as a visual artist, she made a short 8-minute erotic film Death Valley that featured a male masturbating alone in the desert with nothing left to the imagination. But to her credit, Taylor-Johnson proves that graphic images are not needed and this is the first mainstream Hollywood film that successfully shows female pleasure in bondage scenes.

Unfortunately, we have to wade through an awful lot that is trite in the first part that plays like the opening of a porn movie in which a washing machine repairman will turn up at a house and be met by a bored housewife.

Steele turns up at Grey’s offices to interview him for a university paper. His model seems to be American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, he wears sharp suits, flashes his business card and has more money than an internet billionaire. How he came to be so rich is not very clear. She's a student in a flowery skirt, unbuttoned to make the collars out of shape and an unflattering blue cardigan. He immediately takes control.

The next meeting comes at her workplace, a handyman’s store where he buys cable wire, rope and tape. As Steele comments he’s the tools of a serial killer.

The roots of the novel as Twilight fan fiction become obvious as Grey fights his desire to corrupt the virginal Steele. These scenes are so wearing, that when Steele drunkenly phones Grey up and mocks his lame pick-up lines, it’s impossible not to feel hard done by the fact that we’ve spent half an hour watching what she decries as lame in 30 seconds.

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The film hits its stride once Grey introduces his ‘play room’ where he keeps his sado-masochistic toys, and tells Steele he wants her to sign a contract whereby she’ll agree to be his submissive and here the film threatens to be transgressive and revelatory.

The cat and mouse negotiations turn the power structure on its head and introduce the idea that extreme sex can be pleasurable if performed in the right manner. When Grey and Steele are the only characters on screen (and we lose the best friend Kate and the parental figures) the film is genuinely intriguing and Johnson announces herself as a star.

The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson is notable for more than having her mother’s good looks, as she jumps from being naive to forthright with aplomb. Opposite her Jamie Dornan is given the role of the man who never smiles, and he needs that straight face to deliver some hokey lines. It’s also nice to see a film in which the best asset of the male star is his body. Taylor-Johnson seems to have turned the table on the casting methods of male directors with their leading ladies.

Yet ultimately this is a Hollywood film, and it follows a three act structure and has a morality that would satisfy the writers of the Hays Code. By European art-house standards, this seems rather tame, yet within the limits of Hollywood Taylor-Johnson has pushed them as far as she can and comes up against a brick wall that resist anything truly changing.

As a piece of multiplex entertainment, enjoyment will probably be determined by whether one is happy watching the same stereotypes being trotted out, but with more interesting sex scenes .

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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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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.

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50 Shades of Grey review

We dare you to watch fifty shades of grey 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.

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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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Movies | Review: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

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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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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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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.

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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COMMENTS

Fifty Shades of Grey
Jason Bailey Flavorwire I wish it had either been much better or much worse. May 28, 2016 Full Review Joe Morgenstern Wall Street Journal Fifty Shades of Grey delivers, however ponderously, on its ...
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.
'Fifty Shades of Grey': Film Review
Movie Reviews '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.
Fifty Shades of Grey Review
Review. Fifty Shades of Grey Is Tamer Than You Might Think, But It's a Lot Better, Too. ... The movie has a refreshing, friendly, youthful energy; it's exciting, and excited, and, for the most ...
Fifty Shades of Grey Review: Movie Adaptation Is Better Than Expected
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 ...
Movie Review: 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
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 (2015)
Film Movie Reviews Fifty Shades of Grey — 2015. Fifty Shades of Grey. 2015. 2h 5m. R. Drama/Romance/Thriller. Where to Watch. Buy. ... It can't be easy, acting in a Fifty Shades Of Grey movie.
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': EW movie review
The movie Fifty Shades of Grey is considerably better written than the book. It is also sort of classy-looking, in a generic, TV-ad-for-bath-oil way. Dakota Johnson, who plays the virgin English ...
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" 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 critic reviews
Feb 10, 2015. The film strips Fifty Shades of Grey to its essentials: a confident man, an awkward girl, and a red room rimmed with leather handcuffs. From there, Taylor-Johnson rebuilds. She constructs an erotic dramedy that takes its romance seriously even as it admits that Christian Grey's very existence is absurd.
Fifty Shades of Grey: A flaccid performance from Jamie Dornan reveals
Fifty Shades of Grey movie review: A flaccid performance First-look review: The most erotic moment in Sam Taylor-Wood's film was the sight of a skyscraper, according to our critic Kaleem Aftab
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)
Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2015 American erotic romantic drama film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson from a screenplay by Kelly Marcel.Produced by Focus Features, Michael De Luca Productions, and Trigger Street Productions, and distributed by Universal Pictures, it is based on E. L. James' 2011 novel of the same name, and serves as the first installment in the Fifty Shades film series.
Fifty Shades of Grey
Movie Review. Blame the common cold for what follows. ... 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 ...
Fifty Shades of Grey
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: Laughable but Hot
By Josh Wigler February 13, 2015. "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 ...
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 ...
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' 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 Review
The long-awaited screen adaptation of E.L. James' kinky bestseller 'Fifty Shades of Grey' will only appeal to gluttons for punishment — by boredom 'Fifty Shades of Grey' Movie Review

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