Half-hearted wannabe pervert porn

Rating: 6/10 (23 February 2015)

Shop assistant, impending college graduate, cutie and improbable virgin Anastasia encounters hot millionaire businessman and adopted sexual screw-up Christian, and there is an immediate attraction between them. The relationship develops and Christian, having tenderly and intimately relieved Anastasia of her virginity, makes it clear that his interest lies in S&M (and, more specifically, domination/submission) with no intimacy or tenderness. Anatasia umms and ahs and tries it out a bit, and the film ends with a crisis, all set up for part 2.
I am male, English, and 62. The books (which I have not read) were not aimed at me, and neither is this film. Nevertheless, I will approach it as objectively as I can.
The reproductive urge and underlying sex drive is a major motivation in the animal kingdom, not least for humans. Being blessed (or cursed) with rational thought, humans can cross-pollinate their sex drives with all sorts of extraneous elements: societal taboos, personal moralities, fetishes, perversions and the like. It is undeniable that the book from which this film derives tapped into something which made it a phenomenon in a particular niche market (primarily respectable whitebread middle class women). I suggest that it tapped into some sort of vicarious wish-fulfilment area, giving the frisson of the sexual deviation/s depicted without the actual risk or pain involved.
This is a difficult thing to convey in a film, especially one which finds itself hidebound by the practical problems which face this movie. On one hand, it knows that it is intended to appeal to the niche market which purchased the book in truckloads. On the other, it desperately wants to have mass-market appeal. Despite the film's undeniable glossy coating, this latter quest is tied together at the ankles by the fact that making a romance predicated on tieing someone up and hitting them very hard is fundamentally unappealing unless you are already converted to that particular cause. The camera slowly makes its way down naked bodies in sensuous close-up – very nice - following which there is a bit of bondage and a bit of flagellation, and I go "OK, you just lost me." There seems to be far more time devoted to the rules, non-disclosure agreements and contracts involved with Christian's little foible than on the little foible itself. And there is an interesting story to be told about two people, each of whom is intent on changing the other against their will, a story touched on but not explored.
Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan look very attractive both in and out of their clothing, and they both work hard, but I didn't find either character very believable, and the relationship between them even less so. Miss Johnson has a dusting of pubic hair which the camera constantly shies away from for some reason, and Mr Dornan's todger is, famously, not on display. For a film which depends for its appeal on sexually frank subject matter, it is astonishingly coy about it and, consequently, not very convincing. Above everything else, it is hugely unerotic.
There is a saying in the north of England – "Neither nowt nor summat" (translates as "Neither nothing nor something.") Fifty Shades Of Grey is a prime example of what that expression means.