SPOILER ALERT! (You have been warned.)
It would have been so easy to stroll into The Light Vue cinema, with a cynical twitch of the eyebrow, expecting to experience the cultural nadir of the year. 50 Shades of Grey, the ‘mum-porn’ extravaganza which shook up the literary world in 2011, is now a film. A former work of Twilight Saga fan-fiction has been given the A-list treatment.
I can’t say I much enjoyed reading the first book in the trilogy. Anastasia Steele, the English-major, Hardy-loving protagonist herself, would have surely baulked at the writing of E.L. James, and the script unfortunately doesn’t swerve some of her famous clangers (thankfully, there’s a lack of ‘inner goddesses’).
Yet, as easy as it would have been to let these preconceptions affect my viewing of the film, I instead decided to give it a chance. Honestly? It’s nowhere near as bad as iMDb would have you believe. Sam Taylor-Johnson – I’ll give her the credit – has managed to sweep up some of James’ shameless indulgences of far-fetched fantasy into a stylish, sleek and, at times, very sexy piece of cinema.
Of course, there are some parts which were beyond saving, and not always to do with the plot. Bordering from painfully cringeworthy to straight-up confusing, here are the 10 parts of the film which had me biting my lip… to hold in my laughter.
1) The film is very grey. There’s probably 50 shades of it…
Just look at this beautiful greyness.
Grey suits.
Grey models, wait, no, secretaries.
Lovely selection of ties here.
…we get it.
2) Dakota Johnson cannot fall.
Poor lamb probably took 50 takes of that scene where she first encounters Mr. Grey, yet she still couldn’t fall properly. ‘
Yes, walking in a normal fashion is cool, but I’mma go jump through the door onto the ground now if that’s cool? Yeah, bye.”
3) Kate is awful.
She seems outgoing, friendly, generally easy to live with, but it’s all a plot…
TO STEAL HER SANDWICH.
OH. So, you weren’t hungry. And now you are. And now you expect Ana to make another sandwich for HERSELF? What kind of atrocity did Kate live through to think it’s okay to steal her room mate’s sandwich? IN FRONT OF HER FACE? Who does that? I imagine a similar scenario going down in Hyde Park and all I can picture is police cars.
4) Let’s not forget Christian does it to her too…
Toast is apparently sexy. Ana remains hungry. She doesn’t even get to eat the sushi he provides for her in the boardroom.
5) ‘Laters, baby’
The line is supposed to be Christian mocking his brother Elliot, after interrupting his sexy time with the demon Kate, but it just comes out of nowhere. You are blindsided by Jamie Dornan’s awkwardness. His mouth says ‘laters, baby’ but his eyes say ‘I need to chew on a beehive and drink Dettol to kill that cringeworthy line off my tongue’.
Sarcasm was seriously lacking.
6) When Ana Steele becomes Storm
In a bizarre X-Men crossover, Ana becomes slightly aroused on first encounter with Mr. Grey and decides to make it rain in order to cool down, despite being a completely clear day two seconds before. The sun was shining into the office.
Are cold showers not good enough for you?
7) Ana’s flip phone
It doesn’t come across as a hipster tribute to the Motorola RAZR. The lass is stuck in 2003.
With her sassy VW.
She even wears a T-SHIRT on a night out. I found myself thinking “why do you need your computer to email him, just use your phone?”, THEN I REMEMBERED. Also now questioning how Christian found her all the time since she didn’t have Find My iPhone.
8) Mia’s interesting take at talking.
I’m not entirely sure what Rita Ora was going for in her brief scenes, but it wasn’t words.
Nice hair, though.
9) The random dance to Witchcraft.
Dressed to kill (seriously, the dress is gorgeous), but the dancing was an unwelcome nail in the coffin.
10) Christian Grey: the aromantic romantic.
Taylor-Johnson did a stand up job of making the paperwork a focal feature of the film. It brought out the callousness of Christian and the lengths to which he’ll go to avoid his humanity.
He literally gets excited at the thought of contractual law.
Yet he willingly snogged Ana in a lift.
He lets her touch his hair, despite saying it’s against the ‘rules’. He slept in the same bed as her. Twice. Once after sex at his initiation (!) and before when she was drunk and had nowhere else to sleep. She hardly forced him into the idea (but lord, you’ll hear her begging for it). He’s even suggests weekly dates to add to the contract, without her negotiating him for it! All before they had a barny about how he’s, like, so not romantic? Okay, I might be a bit unconvinced that it’s Ana who’s ‘changing’ you, pal. You love that hearts and flowers stuff, as you called it.
As a flick, 50 Shades is genuinely worth the watch. Gone is the plodding first-person dialogue, crammed with unnecessary anatomical references and strange metaphors about toothbrushes. In its place in the limelight are the true complexities of the story, about what it means to love somebody when those emotions are completely separated from desire. But if you’re not interested in that, I highly recommend it for the comedy. When push comes to shove, it’s still a better love story than Twil – oh, hold on…
Sources:
– http://allinpicture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-HD-Trailer-Romance.jpg
– http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9844815.ece/alternates/w620/50-shades.jpg
– http://collider.com/new-fifty-shades-of-grey-images/
– http://cdn2.thegloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/50-Shades-Of-Grey-Christian-Grey-Ties.jpg
– http://s9.favim.com/orig/140811/boy-celebrity-david-schwimmer-delicious-Favim.com-1987189.jpg
– still from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjfx5AJyeQ
– http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1339344082354_850262.png
– http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s286/seablue66/bug/lpl1.jpg)
– http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2600872/thumbs/o-RITA-ORA-facebook.jpg
– http://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/50.jpg)