I Put A Spell On You

Rating: 2/10 (22 January 2018)

People talk like this is the worst movie ever made, like it's some Ed Wood Plan 9 fiasco. Well, it's a very bad movie all right. But it's not that bad.
Can you really hate a movie that starts with a sexy cover version of Screaming Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" over the opening titles? I mean, Creedence Clearwater Revival covered that song. It's Fifties rock, and it's the real deal!
(Idea for a movie: John Fogerty plays a beloved sixty-something rock legend who has a secret side as a pain-inflicting Dom! They call him the Midnight Choogler . . .)
Anyway, this movie is horrible, but not because there's too much brutal violence or hardcore sex. It's just that Master Grey, the handsome boy billionaire who like to tie women up and punish them, lacks all human personality and is a totally lifeless character. Fifty Shades is not a real romance, because there is no romantic hero. There's just an empty suit.
See, when you read a real romance, like OUTLANDER by Diana Gabaldon, the hero is dark and tortured for reasons that have weight and stature. He's a guy who commands respect from everyone, not just one impressionable young girl. He's a guy who has already proved himself in ways that involve real blood, sweat, and danger. If someone's going to spank a young girl, it ought to be someone who knows something about pain. A brawler with a broadsword, a warrior from a proud people, not some faceless billionaire who pushes buttons.
Fifty Shades fails because this Grey guy is just not an interesting person. His sexual tastes may be interesting, or shocking, but other than that, so what? Think about Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula. Women find him fascinating for reasons that have nothing to do with his vampire nature. Like when they ask him about fixing up his new home, Carfax Abbey, and he says, "I shall do very little repairing. It reminds me of the broken battlements of my own castle, in Transylvania." Dracula is a man with a past, a real identity, real allure. Christian Grey is banal, empty, as lifeless as the models last year's fashion magazines.
I keep wanting to say that Dakota Johnson was great as Anastasia. She was, but only because the script actually gives her something to work against. Oh, and I love the fact that her blonde roommate turns out to be nice and not killed at the end.