Better than expected

Rating: 4/10 (21 January 2016)

You can probably see what my expectations were like for this movie when I give my review such a title and rate it only 2 out of 5. "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a pretty controversial film from earlier this year that was directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson ("Nowhere Boy") and the base material was adapted by Kelly Marcel ("Saving Mr. Banks"). So there is some talent included here and without having read the book, I am fairly certain that they did the best with E.L. James' material that they could. Casting decisions are okay too. There is actually an Oscar winner in here (Marcia Gay Harden) and the two leads are pretty attractive and also not too bad on the acting front. For Dakota Johnson it may be in the genes looking at who her parents are.
The story is about a young woman that discovers her sexuality slowly when she runs into a billionaire, whose preferences are somewhat different from the norm. There are a couple cringeworthy moments here, for example that she has to be a virgin, but all in all, it's not a complete failure what it could have been too given the material. The main theme of the film is discovering their own and their partner's sexual identity. Unfortunately, from that perspective it is not really working. The characters' actions are just too wishy-washy and completely change in an unrealistic manner during several sequences of the film. Sometimes she is totally into his stuff, then the exact opposite. He says he is not a romantic and yet he does some romantic stuff on several occasions of the film. There were several parts where it just didn't make sense.
So yeah, maybe this is a pretty good watch if you are horny or if you have tendencies that resemble the ones from the characters in the film when it comes to your sex-life, but other than that, it is not a particularly good watch and also way too long and occasionally dragging at almost 2 hours and 10 minutes. The material is simply not deep enough for anything over 90 minutes in my opinion. I cannot recommend the watch and it is pretty ridiculous that there will apparently be at least 2 more movies. Talk about milking a dead cow. All for the box office success and I would be massively surprised if those sequels will be any better than this one here. Thumbs down. Also not big at all on the Oscar-nominated song. Pretty weak film all around.