Tag Archives: movies

50 Shades of Grey Review

Posted by diverseharmony on

I finally forced myself to watch 50 Shades of Grey.  I did my best to go into it with an open and unbiased mind despite the fact that I thought the book was so terrible I couldn’t even finish it.  My reasons for watching it was partly curiosity and partly the fact that I don’t like to judge movies unless I’ve watched them.

So now that I’ve watched it, I can say that I was mostly correct in my assumptions about how bad it would be.  Did I hate it?  No.  But was it something I’d want to watch again or recommend to anyone?  Definitely not.

I’ll start off by saying that Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan were extremely stiff in their acting.  Maybe it was them or maybe it was the horrible dialogue, or maybe it was a combination of both.   Each scene felt like I was watching some amateur high school play.  The dialogue was cliche and cheesy, and had me rolling my eyes throughout the movie.  I guess that some of it was probably taken from the book, and maybe that’s the real problem.  Both actors seemed uncomfortable and unnatural in most of their scenes together.  I don’t feel that they have good chemistry at all.

So let’s get down to the sex.  There’s a lot of nudity and several sex scenes.  They are pretty graphic to the point that it made me feel like I was watching one of those after midnight soft core porn movies on Cinemax.  I mean, you just don’t see that kind of nudity in movies that are in the theater, and if you do, it’s usually just like one extreme sex scene.  This movie has more than one extreme sex scene.  I do admit that some of them were a little sexy in how they were shot.  However, the bad plot, dialogue, and acting, pretty much cancel out anything good about the movie.  I guess it didn’t help that I don’t think that Dakota Johnson is attractive at all.  And whoever gave her that horrible crooked bangs haircut should be fired.

I have to say that I do commend the actors for taking such a career risk in doing this movie.  I’m sure that many actors turned down these roles based on the BDSM sex scenes alone.  I do think this is the kind of a story that does better as a book than a movie.  Someone who doesn’t know anything about BDSM or read erotica probably won’t understand some of the references made or the appeal of the subject matter.  Also, everything seemed sort of like it’s rushed through in the movie, and I’m not sure if it’s like that in the books because as I said, I never finished the first one.  I might try again sometime, but I doubt it.  It’s extremely poorly written, and that is a big pet peeve of mine.

I know there are sequels being done for this movie. I’m not sure how those will do in the theater after the first movie.  I don’t know if I will watch any of the sequels.  I almost always dislike a sequel.  Overall, I’d say that if you’re curious, you should watch 50 Shades of Grey, but don’t go into it with expectations.  From what I understand, if you’re a fan of the books, you’ll probably be disappointed.