Twilight is still worse

Rating: 6/10 (2 May 2015)

Saw this to see what all the fuss was all about. The smart marketing guys and galls at Universal targeted this flick at women coz it opened at Valentine's Day and women crave roman at this time. This film is supposed to be romantic -and it sort of is- but at the same time it incorporates BDSM into the storyline (trust me, there is no BDSM in this film, very soft porn at best maybe) which is always good for controversy and to spike curiosity. A lot of criticism on this film was about the lead actress not being a strong female character, but that argument is moot. This film is supposed to be a female fantasy of a strong dominant rich alpha male who sweeps them of their feet. But it also tries to sell the not entirely convincing story of a tormented man with a socially unaccepted obsession. There is another film on this subject called 'Secretary' which did a lot better job at telling this story. I won't spoil anything but there is a comical scene (it's not intended to be funny) about a contract negotiation where words are used you normally don't hear in American mainstream cinema. So maybe we should be commending them in not trying to make a romantic comedy done a 1000 times before but do something a bit more dramatic. The problem is that it's not convincing, the dialogue is sometimes poorly written and it's basically a movie with an identity crisis, it tries to be more things than it is. they should have either gone full-out dramatic and focused on the story and made it darker and less mainstream or made it a flatout romance. In any case, it's not as bad as those twilight movies were and Dakota Johnson is quite nice to look at.