Review of Fifty Shades of Grey Full Movie

Review of Fifty Shades of Grey Full Movie: I'm not the kind of person who likes to say bad things about a film just for the sake of it. Even if a film has a not so good reputation I'll always give it the benefit of the doubt and give it a go, keeping my mind open to possibly liking it. I did this with "Fifty Shades of Grey", the big screen adaptation of E.L. James' hugely successful novel. Putting aside any preconceived notions I had, I went in with a blank slate and just let the movie speak for itself, and it did speak for itself and it was not good.

The film stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan as the leads, Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, and follows their romance, for lack of a better, as he introduces her to his rather abnormal lifestyle. I'll start off with a positive, possibly the only one in this entire thing. Is the film well shot? Yes, it is. It's nothing extravagant but it is fairly competently well filmed and the way some scenes are lit are actually not bad. The boardroom meeting between Ana and Christian comes to mind as a good example of some decent attempts at nice lighting. Having said that, the directing in every single scene is beyond basic. 

It is amateurish and so forced and needy. Instead of letting the "relationship" organically form, director Sam Taylor-Johnson lingers on shots that are meant to induce feelings of passion and excitement, but instead come off as completely hokey and at times just plain idiotic. And the script really doesn't make things any better, it is absolutely horrendous! Not a single line feels original or inspired. The entire story feels like some immature fantasy. Which is exactly what this is... look it up, this whole thing started as "Twilight" fan fiction! And it really shows.

Dakota Johnson is a decent enough actress but here she is bland, boring and incredibly dull. In fact, her character is very similar to the bland, boring and dull Bella Swan played by Kristen Stewart in "Twilight". Another actress who is fairly decent in her own right but was robbed of all emotions and acting abilities in those films. As for Jamie Dornan, he is meant to be playing an emotionless person, but his performance here lacks any sort of resemblance of how a human being behaves and he is not helped with his robotic and totally unnatural dialogue. There is zero chemistry between the leads. And even amongst the rest of the cast, there's absolutely no connection between anyone. Everything feels so fake and unnatural. 

The only relationship that seems just slightly credible is the one between Ana and her mum, which takes up a total of maybe two minutes screen time... after that, it's back to the crappy, boring story which we have to endure for the other 120 minutes. One of the main problems with "Fifty Shades of Grey" is that it's so damn boring. There is not one interesting thing to enjoy in this joke of a film. There are a few moments of unintended comedy with certain lines of dialogue, but as a whole, the bloody thing isn't even so bad it's good... it's just bad. Really bad. The film even seems to be afraid to embrace its main premise. For all it's hardcore talk, the actual scenes that depict any sort of sexual activity are so incredibly tame.

Yes, there is nudity, but so does 70% of other sex scenes already out there. So what is there about the scenes in this film that sets it apart? Because there has to be something, for this is the whole catch of the film after all. The answer... absolutely nothing! The film can't even identify with its own ridiculousness, making the whole thing very hypocritical. And the entire effort feels so staged and rehearsed. Every movement and gesture just feels so unnatural and predetermined. There is absolutely no spontaneity in any of the scenes. However, by far my biggest problem with the film is the love story if you can even call it that. This is the most unhealthy relationship I've ever witnessed on screen. 

It baffles me why a girl like Anastasia would be even remotely interested in a creep like Christian Grey. There are so many red flags early on, she should have just run... run and not looked back. Just the fact that he's ordering her around after having simply bumped into her a few times should have set off some alarm bells. Also, there are honestly some sick and twisted themes and story points that come up in this film that are simply glossed over or even worse, the film at times try to validate this behavior, such as child abuse! 

Christian Grey specifically says that he is friends with the woman who sexually abused him when he was a teenager. I mean, what the hell!? The film is really an insult to anyone who takes filmmaking seriously. The fact that this series has now made a billion dollars when there are so many amazing films that don't even get to see the light of day is so wrong. "Fifty Shades of Grey" is not just a bad film, it's horrible on so many levels. It's Fifty Shades of pure horrendous writing, crappy acting, and uninspired filmmaking. To put it simply... the film bloody sucks!