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Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Review

Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2015 erotic romantic drama film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. It’s a perfectly fine, somewhat underrated flick.

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“Because I’m fifty shades of fucked up, Anastasia“

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Literature student Anastasia Steele’s life changes forever when she meets handsome, yet tormented, billionaire Christian Grey and the two begin a sadomasochistic sexual relationship. This movie was based on an infamously bad bestseller novel by E. L. James and it’s apparently mostly faithful to it, though obviously the sex scenes were significantly toned down.

First and foremost, I haven’t read the book and I usually don’t care for this type of movie, but I find the trashing of this film needlessly excessive given that it’s not only far from horrible, but actually not all that bad either. It gets a passing grade from me personally because it gets some things right while consistently being hugely entertaining. It’s a very fun guilty pleasure type film and there is nothing wrong with that.

My problem with it is that it’s never as salacious as it thinks it is. This is clearly a story that has older women as its target demographic as there are no men in particular who would find this film all that edgy because it simply isn’t. When you focus on a BDSM storyline, you should at least try to include full nudity from both leading actors and depict this practice a bit more in-depth. This film does neither of those. The nudity is very limited while the sexual practice was shown only slightly and not all that realistically.

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The biggest issue is that third act. Why is it that Hollywood needs to find excuses for all these men who have fetishes and kinks? The ending of the movie posits that Christian engages in BDSM because he experienced some past trauma, but this is not how sexuality works. It is false psychology that led to needlessly over-the-top ending with a lot of unnecessary dramatic confessions and crying.

Jamie Dornan looks good here, but he is hardly great as Christian. He isn’t a problem. As ‘Belfast’ showed, he is a very good actor when given the right role, but this one was undercooked and very one-note. The movie would have been much better had he been given more personality.

But Dakota Johnson fared much better. She is actually terrific as Anastasia, both believable and very memorable. Her character at least got a bit more depth and she delivered in those emotional sequences. The chemistry between the two is so-so, but I actually really appreciated the more romantic side of this movie as their scenes together where they are talking and negotiating are both fun and very charming in a way.

Fifty Shades of Grey is also elevated by strong cinematography with some particularly superb takes of both the city and the cold, imposing interiors. A lot of wealth is put on display here and that was annoying, but also undeniably fun to watch. The score is also excellent and suitably sensual while the directing is better than expected for this type of film. The dialogue is cringey at times, but also surprisingly self-aware in certain moments, which made the movie pleasantly lightweight. It just needed more edge in terms of sexuality.

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