Fifty Shades of Grey
by Kelly Marcel, EL James
Amanda and I (and a not insignificant stash of alcohol) went to Fifty Shades of Grey so you don’t have to. We take our jobs seriously here at the Pink Palace of Bitchery.
We will also turn your attention to the $50 Not 50 Shades campaign, which is aimed at raising money for battered women. Shelters in your area would be delighted with any money or items like tampons and maxipads, toothpaste, baby food, and things of that nature.
If you are one of the lucky people who have not heard about this nonsense, this is the movie version of EL James’ Twilight fanfic turned international tapping of the zeitgiest, where abuse disguised as terrible BDSM practices have been introduced to the wider world.
RHG: Not enough booze.
Amanda: Well at least we know for the second movie to probably triple our supplies. Should we start off with the things we liked, because I’m sure that’s a shorter list.
RHG: Dakota Johnson is a fucking professional the tried her hardest with the crap she was given. She was charming and charismatic on screen, and I hope to god that she manages to get a decent career after this.
Amanda: PREACH
She made Ana likable, funny, and necessarily skeptic about the whole clusterfuck of a situation.
RHG: Making Ana likable? REALLY HARD. REALLY REALLY HARD.
Amanda: Well there was none of that “inner goddess” BS to deal with either. None of those wet blanket, milquetoast monologues. My expectations were low in general and I firmly expected Dakota to be the one that made me cringe, but she wasn’t.
RHG: Christ I forgot about that bullshit.
Nope, she was not the cringey one.
Amanda: And that soundtrack. Another plus for me.
RHG: I kept expecting to hear “It’s a man’s world.” But the slow version of of “Crazy in Love” was the best part of the movie.
Amanda: Besides the meeting over fisting rules, of course.
RHG: WORD. Actually seeing Ana negotiate the contract was hilarious.
Amanda: Bonus points for not letting Douchcanoe Grey talk her into things she clearly had no interest in. “Oh you might like it. Sure you don’t want to try?”
“Fuck off. That’s not my sort of stuff.”
(I’m paraphrasing here.)
RHG: Now lets talk about the cardboard elephant in the room. I speak, of course, of Jamie Dornan. Look, there’s a lot of stuff one can put on the page that works in writing, but sounds terrible when coming out of the mouth of a human(ish) person. But this dialogue looked awkward on the page, and came out even worse. I mean, Ian McKellen MIGHT be able to sell “I’m fifty shades of fucked up” (MIGHT) but he’s Sir Ian Fucking McKellen, and Jamie Dornan never figured out how to make Christian Grey seem like a person, much less someone anyone would want to spend time with and also bang.
Amanda: He was wooden and stiff, and certainly not in the way I was hoping. I just kept wondering why he agreed to do this movie (aside from the fuckton of cash, of course) if he didn’t give two shits about making it convincing. I also have to wonder if there was any possible way of making that dialogue seem believable. Could they have possibly found another actor who made it work? I don’t know.
But I will say this. If they wanted to get a new Christian Grey for the next movies, I’d go with it. You know, like everyone does when they change the actor for a character in the soap opera and no one comments that it’s a completely different person with a different hair color and we’re all just going to go with it (I’m looking at you, Carly from General Hospital).
RHG: I suspect that most of the actors that would be up for this role looked at the 50 Shades fandom, and looked at the Twilight fandom, and looked at The Cautionary Tale of Robert Pattinson and hopped on their nopetapuses and noped on out.
Amanda: All I’m saying is that Charlie Hunnam would have been totally cool with showing his dick.
RHG: Probably. YES BITCHERY YOU HEARD IT RIGHT. There’s no dick in this movie of an erotica novel. There’s boob, and there’s some pubic hair (hers not his) but no dick. Of course, there’s also not a lot of sex?
Amanda: But there is so much boobage that Dakota’s chest should have gotten its own credit line. And there was what…four sex scenes? Five, maybe. Maybe I was a little tipsy, or my mouth hurt too much (fuck braces), or that Jamie was just so clinical, but I found the sex scenes to be boring.
RHG: They were. I will say this, the sex scenes were focused on Ana’s pleasure and experience, and the camera did not give a single solitary fuck if Christian got off or not. I suspect that’s a result of having a female director, and I am certain that given that this movie has made $30M in one day, they’ll pull a Twilight and give the next movies to male directors and I bet you everything I have in my pocket ($3 and an empty rum bottle) that the sex will be filmed verrrrrrrrry differently.
Amanda: Agreed. Ana may have been completely naked on several occasions, but I never felt the camera sexualized her. Or that the camera was an extension of Christian’s gaze. But dear god, please let’s not get a dude to do this. I mean, the content is already questionable as it is, and truthfully, the movie could have been worse than what is was. I don’t want to tempt fate.
RHG: The rest of the movie was boring. Still no way to see why anyone would like Christian, or really much of a personality for Ana, and for some reason Jennifer Ehle and Marcia Gay Harden got roped into this? Like, Marcia, honey, you have a FUCKING OSCAR. You’re better than two scenes in this. Does EL James have your puppy in a basement somewhere?
Amanda: Part of me hopes that they asked to be in it because of the books. Can I also suggest that we cancel the next two movies and just leave the movie version of events with Ana telling Christian “kthxbye, leave me alone?”
RHG: That’d be nice. I thought the movie didn’t hit as hard on Christian’s abusive behavior, but he still stalked her, stole her FUCKING CAR (and had his manservant sell it and he NEVER GAVE HER THE FUCKING MONEY? WHO DOES THAT?), and refused to let her talk to anyone about what he was asking her to do so she could get outside information and I have this hope that people will see the movie and see the events on the screen and go “….dude this is bullshit, how is this crap romantic?” because it’s less distant than when it’s on the page, but… well, I want that. It’s not gonna happen.
Anyway, ending the entire 50 Shades Cinematic Universe with Ana going “Oh, you’re gonna whip me on the ass and do no prep to make sure I’m ready for this? PEACE OUT MOTHERFUCKER” would be awesome.
Amanda: So. If you just HAD to assign this a grade, what would you give it? I mean, I feel like it already being Fifty Shades and promoting manipulation, abuse, and a narrow, incorrect view of BDSM already works against any positive grades. But it had its bright spots (Thanks, Beyonce).
RHG: Sadly a Y (as in WHY GOD WHY) is not an option. I guess a D-, thanks to Bey and Dakota and the rare look at a woman’s sexual pleasure being present, plus also important?
Amanda: I’m giving it a D- too because that’s exactly what it gave me. A movie based on erotica, minus the D. HEYOOO.
Fifty Shades of Grey is in theatres now, and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.
Saw 50 Shades today. First of all let me say I didn’t think it was a good idea from the start. It couldn’t be done correctly to get the full effect of the book. I was correct. Thankfully I had a gift card so it was essentially free.
I thought Dakota did a horrible job of portraying Anastasia. With exception to the part where she was going over the contract. Jamie had absolutely no chemistry with her. He is very good looking, she is not so much.
The sex scenes were not erotic at all. It was just not believable. Let’s not make the trilogy. Let’s be one and done. That’s my safe word.
Your review is hilarious.
I have no intention of going anywhere *near* this movie, or the book. One of the HUGE problems I have with some of the books in the romance genre is that *some* of them (only some) portray rape, control and abuse as if it’s a good thing. Some people may find it sexy. I don’t. To me, sexy is the guy who takes extreme care to make sure that that woman really wants him and that she enjoys the experience as much as she does – and, if it’s her first time (like the hapless Ana) or if she’s been hurt, is doubly careful.
I think I would hate this movie with the passion of ten thousand suns. Good for those who love it – it’s not for me.
QUOTE: “… the sex scenes were focused on Ana’s pleasure and experience, and the camera did not give a single solitary fuck if Christian got off or not. I suspect that’s a result of having a female director …”
@RGH: Seamus McGarvey is a top-flight cinematographer. Taylor-Johnson probably said “make this look like a Skinemax porno” & went from there.
Mainstream porn, hard- or soft-core, hasn’t given a limp wank whether the guy enjoys himself since before John Holmes died. Heck, it barely ever shows his face because the paying audience doesn’t want to empathize with him. They want to see her getting off. A woman’s pleasure is what gives men permission to enjoy the scene.
If you want see men enjoying sex, you have to watch gay male porn.
You guys are the best. Thank you for taking one for the team, and especially, thank you for the $50 for shelters link. So very important to spread the word about the basic (too often unmet) needs of women seeking shelter, oftentimes with their traumatized children with them.
So glad that I saw Kingsman this weekend instead. 🙂
I have a friend at work who LOVED the books and went to see the movie. She said that seeing it on screen made her see it as more of an abusive/manipulative relationship than the books, and I can tell her wheels were really turning on how it impacted the way she felt about the books. So if the movie gets people thinking about the mishandling of the dom/sub relationship and how not ok 50 Shades handles things, than that’s a silver lining to all this.
Totally told her to check out The Secretary.
@StarOpal: I am so glad that happened for at least one person.
This comes after me reading four articles in the Washington Post on this–a review, an article about just the sex scenes (with a time-watch), merchandizing, and something else. I suppose I’ll finally go see this since it’s two hours of my life, not the four-six for a book. Thanks to all for preparing me if I should decide to give into pressure and see the darn thing.
Did Dornan not read the source material before taking the role? What sor t of character did he think he’d be portraying?
Anyway, the complaints about clunky dialogue reminded me of Harrison Ford reportedly telling George Lucas that “you can write this shit, George, but you sure as hell can’t say it.”
I saw it and was like M’eh!..Jamie Dornan was too stiff..he never really got into the role
My first impression was that he cannot act but some people have seen him in other movies and swear he can..
Sigh!
Thanks for reminding me why I didn’t finish the book. I didn’t get pass the hardware store, I thought he was a stalker.
Thanks for taking one for the team.
Jamie Dornan was so creepy in The Fall that I’ll never be able to disassociate him from that role. If, for some reason, I decided to watch Fifty Shades of Mysogyny, all I’d see would be that creepy mass murder guy pretending to be an American millionaire so he can get his mitts on more women to murder.
Wonderful review, though! What a shame there was no D.
I think it is telling that in the interview I saw (on Graham Norton) Jamie Dornan was much more excited about the fact that they shot the hardware store scene in a real hardware shop and he loves hardware shops than he was about anything else about the film!
Still not sure if I will see the movie or not–I struggled mightily to finish the books and then wondered why I had bothered. But I just had to comment because this review made me so happy. Nopetapuses….LOL.
I want this movie MST3K’ed. As soon as possible. Yes. Please.
I liked the movie. I liked the books. But I understand pretentiousness :). I am very pretentious as far as archiTecture and fashion are concerned…So it makes me sad that you couldn’t enjoy the movie and it makes me sad that I can’t enjoy myself in ugly, cheap interiors. So ladies that is life I suppose 🙂 Having high standards is essential for the progress of humanity, right? Still I feel lucky I can enjoy really trashy romance in both books and movies 🙂
My sis and I went to see it on Friday 13th specifically for a laugh so we had drinks with dinner and snuck in some more. I knew it would be a train wreck and I was glad we had the extra margaritas (mini margaritas from BevMo for the win). I got carded going in and I’m getting close to forty. I’ve never been carded for a movie in my life. Not even when I went to see Rocky Horror with live cast when I was sixteen and sis was fourteen. When it ended, the lady behind us said, “F**k! I want a refund.” The soundtrack was awesome, but if I notice the soundtrack – especially during the first watch – then the movie sucks. I’d give it an F because the best part was when Christian said something like he “didn’t make love, he fucked hard,” and a guy in the audience yelled, “Hell, yeah!” and everyone laughed. The movie wouldn’t be nearly as funny without the margaritas and people yelling stuff.
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I finally saw this now that it is out on streaming. I thought it was a mixed bag, but definitely better than the books.
1. Dakota Johnson gives a master class in bringing your A-game no matter what the material. (Which she may have learned something about from her parents). I was really impressed with how much she made me like Ana given that I remember that character as a total drip. I did notice that they dialed back the “incoherent klutz” aspect of Ana after the first few scenes. The “contract negotiation” scene was hilarious.
2. I agreed that the sex scenes were much more interested in the woman’s perspective than usual. I would be interested to see the unrated cut because I thought some of the weirder aspects in terms of what was shown and not shown may have been about the R-rating they were going for.
3. I totally understand what everyone is noticing in the comments about Jamie Dornan, but I was not quite as hard on him. In the very few scenes where he gets to be funny and charming and act like an actual 27-year-old, I liked him (and him and Ana together) quite a bit. (For instance, the morning-after scene at his hotel early on, and when he’s interacting with his brother). I don’t think he and the director ever quite figured out what to do with the large parts of the book where he has to act like a humorless 40yo Dom/businessman. The book dialogue they had to use didn’t help.
4. I felt like the stalker aspects that made me uncomfortable in the book were really softened here, partly because Ana has become such a strong character and she never seems all that upset by Christian. She’s so clearly able to say “no” in other contexts that I always felt secure that if she were really unhappy she would express it.
5. On the other hand, it was totally clear why the BDSM community is so unhappy with this book and movie (and honestly, if this is what Jamie Dornan knows about BDSM, I can see why he has expressed so much discomfort with the scene.) It’s one thing to ask a partner to try something new even if they’re not sure they’ll like it (assuming that you’re also OK with stopping if they don’t) and the movie makes it clear that Ana does enjoy the early bondage scenes. But with the final “punishment” scene Ana flat out tells Christian that she doesn’t like the idea and she has so clearly, all long, expressed reservations about the pain aspects of BDSM, that even when she told him to go ahead there is no way that any responsible person would have taken her up on it.
6. Overall, I felt like FSOG was telling the story not of a sexy BDSM movie, but the very familiar trope of the 20-something woman who meets the sexy but really screwed-up guy and tries to be with him anyway, and of course it doesn’t work. On that level…the movie actually kind of works. But I can see why that might not be what the author was looking for and why the director is not coming back (sadly).
I just kept wondering why he agreed to do this movie (aside from the fuckton of cash, of course) if he didn’t give two shits about making it convincing.
I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS SINCE I SAW THE FILM! Literally everyone’s response is “Well can you blame him? It’s ‘Fifty Shades.'” He was, what, choice #3? No one held a gun to his head and told him he had to play the role; they would have found a choice #4. As an actress, I am completely offended by his internal eye-rolling that may as well have been external.
On a positive note, I also whole-heartedly agree that Dakota somehow made Anastasia a likable character. I actually walked out the theatre and thought to myself that I officially like the character more than Bella Swan … which makes me feel like a traitor. Sorry, Stephanie Meyer.