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This Valentine’s Day weekend, some couples will celebrate with cards or flowers or quiet dinners for two. But some unlucky men will find themselves forced to sit through the long-awaited erotic drama, Fifty Shades of Grey—which, as it turns out, will be a kind of ironically fitting torture, considering the film’s subject matter.
The controversial and heavily-hyped film stars Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele, an awkward, homely English major who agrees to help her sick roommate by interviewing handsome young billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) for the school paper. Despite the fact that she’s clumsy and self-conscious and completely unprepared (and she also has the world’s worst haircut), Christian is fascinated by her—and she finds him irresistibly intimidating.
Soon, Christian begins popping up everywhere—at the hardware store where she works, at the bar where she’s had a few too many drinks with her friends—and buying her expensive gifts. But just when Ana finds herself falling for the moody billionaire, he asks her to agree to a different kind of relationship—a proposition that leaves her feeling conflicted.
Fifty Shades of Grey promises to be sultry and steamy—to make pulses race and passions ignite. Instead, it’s long and drawn-out and shamefully boring, with an uninteresting story and a smattering of awkward sex scenes. Really, the only times when the film is even slightly entertaining are those that are so horribly written that they’re unintentionally funny.
Part of the problem is that both characters are almost completely unlikable. Ana is so horribly frumpy and painfully dull that she seems to go out of her way to have no personality whatsoever. Christian seems to bring out the worst in her, causing her to become increasingly whiny and childish as she tries to resist his demands. On occasion, she shows just a hint of strength by refusing to play by his rules, only to turn around and give in a scene or two later.
Meanwhile, Christian isn’t smooth or seductive or sexy; he’s creepy. The way he stares at Ana doesn’t suggest that he wants to seduce her; it suggests that he wants to cut her into little pieces and store her in his freezer. His behavior is the kind that often results in restraining orders. He’s pushy and controlling and possessive long before he has any right to be that way. Yet instead of running the other way, Ana can’t seem to resist his creepy, stalkerish ways. And she deludes herself into believing that she’ll be the woman to change him (despite his admission that there have been 15 others before her)—that if she just lets him whip her every once in a while, it’ll fix him. He’ll get over his troubled childhood, and he’ll throw his rules and contracts out the window and decide that he really wants to have a normal relationship with her after all.
The main characters are so maddening, their relationship so toxic, their chemistry so deficient that the steamier parts of the film feel awkward and unnatural. And while it’s sure to make certain members of the audience giggle like kids sneaking a peek at their first R-rated movie, there’s really nothing here to make it even the slightest bit appealing.
In the end, the only thing that’s truly shocking about Fifty Shades of Grey is that it’s almost as bland and uninteresting as its heroine. If you’re looking for a way to spice up your Valentine’s Day weekend, Indian food might be more effective.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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