The actors try their hardest, but Fifty Shades of Grey deserves fifty spanks

Rating: 4/10 (17 February 2015)

If you ask any guy, then chances are that if you bring up the idea of watching a chick flick, then they'll probably give you that look that questions not only their masculinity, but of all masculinity representation all together. It's not that I think that all chick flicks are bad, but when it comes to making and promoting film for a women audience, then the executives of the production company are probably not going to put a lot of effort into. They'll simply look at When Harry met Sally, Love Story, and Pretty Woman and slap together what they think works.
So more then often, movie studios will turn to romance novels as a quick way to make more movies for women. The setups are very similar; a woman who wants more out of life meets a mysterious man who changes their perspective and then something comes in between that will tear the two apart only for one of then to realize that they were wrong and get back together and live happily ever after. The Twilight franchise is probably the most obvious example, yet is one of the most successful of the chick flicks. Now we go from vampires tosubmission erotica in Fifty Shades of Grey.
Fittingly enough, we open in the grey Seattle where Ana Steele (played by Dakota Johnson) is filling in for her journalism major friend to conduct an interview a young corporate executive, Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan). The interview starts out awkward, but the young stud seams to have interest in the young innocent. She encounters him again ad the hardware store she works at and asks her to a coffee shop outing. Though she initially leaves, he goes as far to send her a first edition of a Thomas Hardy novel to show his interest in her.
She still seams resilient to his advances until he takes her home after getting a phone call from a drunken Ana. When he doesn't take advantage of her, the two start dating and the two seem pretty good. This all comes to a halt when Christian reveals that he has a hobby on the sidelinesbondage. Yep, he's into the handcuffs, whips, and other naughty things that shock Ana at first, but agrees to go with. She signs a non disclosure contract and agrees with Christian that they are playing and not "sleeping together".
Fifty Shades of Grey sounds more like a soft-core porn story then a genuine movie. Though the hard R rating is well earned, I don't know if I say that it went as far as it could have gone. I have seen erotica dramas that are far better (like Last Tango in Paris and Chloe) and most people have already gone as far to call this a waste of time even before it was released. It came and gone and honestly, it could have been worse.
Oh it's badly written (I mean laughably bad dialogue bad), but I can tell that director Sam Taylor-Johnson tried her hardest to make this more thrilling then anything.
Dakota Johnson has a lot of talent. So does Jamie Dornan. The two have genuine chemistry and try their hardest to make some bad writing work. It doesn't even come close though I still applaud their effort. The novel of the same name, from what I'm told, is just as empty and bland, but the production seems to want to make this work. I'm clearly not the target audience, but I think that the same audience who loves the book will still like this
There's not much else to say other then it had an odd ending that seems to only set up for a sequel. It'll probably receive one, but it's not on my pleasure list.
I'll give this four sexy handcuffs out of ten. Some people are really outraged by this project coming to the big screen, but its something I can live with.