Fifty Shades of Grey is about Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), whose background is irrelevant, meeting Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), a very rich person who is into something vaguely resembling BDSM. It's not hard to tell, however, that this film has no idea what it's talking about whenever it brings up Grey's interests, as the explanations are always terribly written and have vaguely uncomfortable connotations. Then again, those connotations are relied upon for the film's attempts to feel "dangerous". Not that it actually does have that feel, of course. Atmospherically, Fifty Shades is a complete failure. The mystery and danger that Christian Grey supposedly embodies barely come through on the big screen, smothered in the movie's blandness and unintentional comedy.
Said unintentional comedy is frequently a consequence of the dreadful adapted script, filled to the brim with dumb lines, like the infamous "I'm fifty shades of fucked up" from which the title derives. My personal favourite is "I don't make love. I fuck. Hard." The latter line elicited laughter from the entire audience, which is a problem because I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be sexy. And even if it wasn't, not a single moment that's supposed to be sexy actually manages to reach that point, either due to similarly hilarious lines, the clichéd nature of much of the story, or the ridiculously safe direction of the sex scenes, wherein the camera seems magnetically drawn to the actors' faces. Sometimes, the sex scenes are completely botched in tone, like one where the camera moves slowly to intense choral music. None of it is at all sexy, but it is hilarious.
As a character, Christian Grey is pretty typical. He's "dangerous", he's "mysterious", he's "fifty shades of fucked up". Basically, he's a stereotypical bad boy for the audience to feel like they can "change", or at least to be intrigued by. The thing is, Dornan is given nothing to work with, so he reads off all his lines in a flat manner. This, again, allows for unintentional comedy, especially when he's describing his racks upon racks of tools in what he calls "The Playroom". The closest he comes to being interesting is in scenes where he goes to places where Anastasia is, which, especially in the earlier parts of the movie, is hilariously creepy. Grey never really stops being creepy, though some moments are better than others, especially in the ones where he vaguely resembles an actual human being. Anastasia isn't much better, having little in the way of a discernible personality and reading her lines just as flatly. There's a lack of passion to be found here, and for a movie allegedly falling under the romance genre, that's a big red flag.
The biggest problem with Fifty Shades, however, it its general lack of direction. It's hard to figure out where it's going at any given time, and notably there's parts of the movie where nothing really happens. In fact, some scenes made me wonder if the cast and crew were just shooting vacation footage, in particular one scene which consists entirely of Christian and Anastasia taking a glider for a spin over the gorgeous Georgian countryside. When something vaguely interesting is finally starting to happen, the movie just sort of ends. When the lights came up, I looked at them in confusion, shocked by the blatant sequel hook that had just occurred. All the same, the film was interminable, so I was glad to be done with it.
Despite all that, it's not entirely bad. The cinematography is really pretty, to the point where the initial sequence could be passed off as a pretty good music video, and the movie retains its genuinely good palette and framing throughout its entire 125 minute running time. Director of Photography Seamus McGarvey is responsible for last year's similarly gorgeous Godzilla reboot and even The Avengers, making this easily the weakest movie he's worked on in the past few years. This man has serious skills, and while they're wasted on Fifty Shades, the visuals do increase the movie's quality. Similarly, the score is actually pretty decent, and while in some scenes it's out of place, it's surprising that the film has such a solid bit of audio behind it. There's also some genuinely good humour in parts, which contributes to the movie being more watchable than it would be otherwise.
What I gather from that is that the filmmakers genuinely did care about Fifty Shades of Grey. A solid cinematographer is onboard, and the screenplay has reportedly been culled of the novel's more offensive parts, but unfortunately, the end result is still a poor film. This might not be worth being offended about, but it's still a failure. That said, there is ironic enjoyment to be found from the film's poor quality, so perhaps it'll be a solid rental for you and some friends to make fun of somewhere down the line. Just don't bother with it in the theatre.
3/10
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