OVP: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Film: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Stars: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eloise Mumford, Jennifer Ehle, Marcia Gay Harden
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Earned It")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oh yes, I saw it, so you don't have to, though I'm going to be honest here-you probably should.  It's rare that a film, particularly in February, manages to capture the zeitgeist in such a ferocious way (and it seems odder that American Sniper has been doing something similar for the last month), and despite its extremely questionable quality, the film is not without its charms and occasionally brings up some fascinating questions about sexuality and our attitudes toward it, even if that comes out more in a film critique sort of way rather than in the actual content of the movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson, with a moniker straight out of a soap opera), a young college graduate who reads Thomas Hardy by day and by night, well, Anastasia is a bit of a blank slate in terms of what she does by night as we learn very little about her personal life throughout the film.  This is the first of several pretty underwritten aspects of the movie, but if I feel a little bit forgiving of them, it's partially because every aspect of the film, but particularly Anastasia, is a complete upgrade from the book.  For those who haven't read the book (or those who are pretending they haven't read the book), you'll know that the source material is absolutely terribly written.  It's been said by virtually everyone out there, to the point where it seems to be more a slam on the content than the actual novel, but the book is SO awfully edited that someone at Random House owes EL James a sincere apology note for letting her grammar appear so terrible.  An editor isn't responsible, however, for the way that Anastasia is insanely annoying as our insight into the novel and characters, and one of several improvements that Sam Taylor-Johnson makes on the film is to have no first-person narrator throughout the movie, giving us less of Anastasia's Christian drool.

The film follows Anastasia as she enters the world of ridiculously sexy and enigmatic Christian Grey, a young billionaire playboy whose wealth comes from, I want to say telecommunications, but honestly does it remotely matter?  It seems like all he does is randomly show up in helicopters and wear the entire J Crew catalog.  Christian, it should be said, doesn't improve much from the book, except in that we have a real-life model to drool over rather than whatever handsome guy from the gym we pictured while pawing through James' novel.  The film continues with Christian of course introducing Anastasia, a virgin, to the world of BDSM, or at least Christian's interpretation of it, and we get lots of long stares, constant denials of Christian's romantic intentions for Anastasia (even though he clearly has romantic feelings for her), and eventually a showdown that involves some spanking with a flail of some sort.  Anastasia realizes that Christian isn't for her, and she leaves in a pensive Empire Strikes Back-style ending (in that you know a sequel is coming).

There's so much to tackle here, so I'm going to start with the controversies first.  Obviously the film has some troublesome depictions of relationships, but I'm going to stop you there.  First off, this is a solo film, and what happens in later films is not really pertinent quite yet, and quite frankly, aside from Anastasia clearly having self-esteem issues, I didn't get too much of a date rape vibe that some have complained about and which I felt the book toed the line toward far more frequently.  Despite Christian being the "dominant" Anastasia is clearly the one calling all of the shots in the film.  She's the one who is being pursued, she's the one who won't sign the contract and dictates all of the arrangement.  Literally she's the one who is in control the entire movie except for the climactic flail scene, after which she quickly dumps Christian.  I'm not saying that she's a good role model or that this is a great depiction of feminism or anything, but at least in the film I just saw, she's only a wallflower in the sense that she's constantly fretting about a boy-she's largely the one in control here, and Christian is the one who is at her beck-and-call.  What is in store with the inevitable sequels I'll get to when those films come out.

I also think that the fact that the film isn't politically correct in terms of the way it features the BDSM community is unfortunate but not really the film's responsibility.  Every time a film comes out, particularly one that's geared toward female audiences, critics lampoon it if it they can't seem to relate or think that it doesn't reflect their viewpoint, which isn't really the point of a film-as long as the narrative makes sense within the confines of the celluloid (which it most definitely does-the plot is repetitive but logical) then making it completely representative of everyone's point of view isn't really a necessity.

I will say that one of the decisions of the film that I found really poor that probably contributed to it being a massive blockbuster was the concessions it made to get an R-rating.  For a film that is literally all about sex, it becomes comical, and not in a good way, that we never see either character nude from the front.  For a film that is literally about trying to let go of your sexual inhibitions, the camerawork by Seamus McGarvey (and my god there are a lot of Oscar nominees attached to this movie, with Anna Behlmer, Marcia Gay Harden, Danny Elfman, and Anne V. Coates, the editor of Lawrence of Arabia!!!, all amongst the credits) is handsome but ridiculous in the way that it avoids in particular showing Jamie Dornan's penis.  For a film that is apparently shaking the rafters of American sexuality, it seems a bit silly that we still can't see fully naked people in an R-rated movie.

Now we'll get to the actual quality of the film, but one quick note before we get there-when I was reading this book, I didn't pick up on the Twilight allusions nearly as heavily, but watching the film in front of me, it was hard not to catch every Twilight comparison.  The film may even end up out-earning some of the mammoth vampire movies, but between the piano, the enigmatically handsome leading man, the lip-biting heroine, the absent mother, hell even the Washington-location, there's really no denying the film owes a HUGE debt to Stephanie Meyer (and I'm hoping she's smart enough to be getting a cut).  With that said, I really liked the Twilight movies, especially some of the earlier ones, and I cannot defend it other than occasionally we have our guilty pleasures and I apparently was a sucker for a cheesy romance on occasion.

The moments that are the cheesiest in the film clearly work the best.  Hate-watching is not what I'd consider doing on a regular basis, but it's hard not to laugh at some of the intentional humor in the movie (like how she is drowning in rain after her first meeting with Christian Grey) and unintentional humor (the way that Christian constantly seems to be contradicting himself with heavy, "I don't want to talk about it but I can't stop talking about it" style monologues).  The best scene in the film by a country mile is the one where Anastasia and Christian are debating the terms of the contract, and we get the immortal giggle-line "what's a butt plug?" amongst multiple bon mots.  It's one of the few times that Jamie Dornan actually seems to be in on the joke.  His stoic Christian is not as much fun as it could have been, and while he looks the part, I would have liked to have seen Charlie Hunnam, an actor who can, you know, actually act, in the role as I think he would have gotten the joke a bit more.  Dakota Johnson is considerably better, though I hated the "she's a plain Jane" trope at the beginning of the film as she clearly isn't going to be with her parents, and her mother's demeanor in particular is echoed in the coyer and more playful scenes of the film (her parents are Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith for those of you who are living under a rock that doesn't have TMZ).

All-in-all, it's a cheesy schlockfest that's based on a terrible book and has no business being seen when you haven't caught Boyhood or Birdman or Selma yet.  But if you have, this might not be the worst $9 investment you ever made.  I don't know-I give it three stars.  Take that for what it is.