I quite liked it

Rating: 6/10 (23 October 2017)

Finally, being a straight male and therefore not in the market for the traditional girls night out, I watched this surreptitiously on TV a few days ago. I have not read any of the books so am judging the film purely on its own merits. OK, so yes it is far too long and the BDSM element is vastly over- hyped, being extremely tame by present-day standards. But for me it does have some erotic charge in the "will they, won't they, what will they do?" sort of way. And the two leads are undoubtedly attractive (Dakota Johnson in my case). Dakota is very well cast. What is curious about the whole thing is that it is really just an old- fashioned rich boy meets poor(ish) girl romance that could have been made 60 years ago. Perhaps that is what others mean when they say the script is clunky. So in all, not a triumph, but not a turkey either.