So you’ve definitely heard the buzz. Is there anyone who hasn’t heard of 50 shades of grey by now? The movie 50 Shades of Grey came out officially on February 15th, but there were a few showings beforehand.
The film chronicled the nontraditional relationship between the young billionaire Christian Grey and the recent college-grad Anastasia Steele. Steele meets Grey when she is assigned to interview him for the school newspaper, taking her sick roommate’s place. Grey introduces the virginal Steele into a world of BDSM, private helicopters, and penthouse apartments.
Well, the movie was definitely steamy, but maybe not as much as some had expected. Jamie Dornan proved to be some serious eye-candy as Christian Grey, but only 14 minutes and 17 seconds of the 125-minute runtime were sex scenes (which is still considerably more than The Wolf of Wall Street’s 3:05). The soundtrack, which featured songs by Sia, Ellie Goulding and even Beyoncé, was the highlight of the movie.
While the movie was better than the book, it was still a flop. At least I wasn’t forced to read about Anastasia’s “inner goddess” on every other page, the film was over-the-top (and not in a good way). One of the sex scenes in particular, was particularly painful to watch. Anastasia was tied up to the bed while Christian strokes her body with a tassel-whip, filmed in slow motion and set to music from a composer from the 16th century. The rest of the sex scenes were equally tame.
Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan lacked chemistry and Dornan seemed too polite to be the domineering, “twitchy-palmed” Christian Grey. Overall, nothing about the film was particularly shocking or even noteworthy. Although I did appreciate that the beginning and the end of the movie are of the same elevator-door scene.