MOVIE REVIEWS

Honestly, it has been a long time since I've watched such a bad movie. The script is just ... stupid and the dialogues even worse. The characters are not believable. I mean, when you watch Twilight, you just swallow the whole thing because it is fantasy and ... OK, it is just a stupid vampires story but, this is just toooooooo bad. I've not read the book but I suspect the fail is not just in the movie but that it is adapting something that is already bad from the beginning. The worst is that I kind of liked Dornan in his role in Fallen but this movie has made me realize what a short range of performing resources he has. Dakota Johnson is not too bad, though. The acting is OK, it is just that you hate such an stupid character. One more to my very narrow list of movies in which I have seriously thought stop watching by the middle of it. I wasted the second hour too, though.

My fiance is a big fan of the movies...and I only mention that because she is worse than me when it comes to sniffing out mainstream erotica. So, you know, totally hit her radar. On my end, I brought the book at LAX one night to read on a layover, and I stopped when Grey picked up his phone to call for a helicopter and started using trucker jargon. "Breaker, breaker, two-nine..." NO! Not reading any more! I honestly didn't even want to watch the movie after encountering that. However, let's be honest, you aren't sitting down to watch the film because of dialogue or plot. You're watching it because of sex. And, out of all the movies, this one actually delivers the most on it. AND, unlike all the sequels, it doesn't claim to be about anything else. It advertises itself as a movie about kinky sex and it delivers as being a movie about kinky sex. So ten stars. It is exactly what it claims to be and delivers on that.

Now I never read the book, and the DVD of this has been sitting in a box for years until recently when, discovering it did actually get both an Oscar and a Grammy nomination, I thought I would give it a go. It's all about "Anastasia" (Dakota Johnson) who goes to interview hunky gazillionaire "Christian" (Jamie Dornan) in his plush office. A bit of flirting ensues as he makes it quite clear that he is interested - but boy, is she in for a surprise when she discovers that all belts and braces does actually having another meaning (as does butt-plug!). What now follows is, I felt, a really tame exercise in soft porn that is about as sexy as putting out the wheelie bin. Dornan is very easy on the eye, but otherwise we are all subjected to a dull, ploddingly produced series of poorly lit scenes that drag on interminably. There's no point evaluating the acting nor the script, they don't matter. This is just a poor attempt to entertain or shock or both that does neither, remotely. Titillatingly tantalising? Nah - just dull. Nice helicopter but the song didn't win either award.