Fifty Shades of Grey [Summary Judgment by Haus]

Step over here, friend, and meet a ghost.

Not just any ghost, mind you, but the ZEITGEIST. The spirit of our times. That’s her right there: That lip-biting housewife stealing a glance at some kinda steamy, kinda escapist, kinda dumb Twilight fan fiction. Disappointed? Yeah. We all are.

Just in case you can’t tell, I’m semi-despondent and generally perplexed by the runaway success of E.L. James’s self-published novel, which sold over one hundred million copies worldwide and made a one percenter of its by all accounts wholly undeserving author. But don’t mind that. The film is a separate thing, of course, a property built neither on clean prose nor intelligent story but merely on raw, hard popularity.

So how is it? Well. Fifty Shades of Grey is at once not as bad as everyone says, and every bit as bad.

The acting and production values are surprisingly good, at least in comparison to the book. It has laugh-out-loud moments, yes, but the sex is actually not unhot, and it has some nice interior decoration, helicopters, suits, cars, and so on to occupy one’s attention (though be cautioned there’s no full frontal nudity, if that’s what you need from it). But it also tests audience credulity with a bludgeon-to-the-mouth stupid ending thanks to a disappointing female lead who somehow — despite perhaps the most upfront and forthright pre-negotiation and discussion of sexual activity EVER — still manages to be surprised and hurt when she “finds out” what her dominant billionaire wants to do. Fans of any sort of female empowerment will leave dismayed by Anastasia’s polyanna hopes and total abdication of responsibility. Oh, and Christian Grey is a billionaire: Why? I’d have much preferred to see the same story told about, say, Zed from Pulp Fiction, or some average bro with nothing extraordinary to offer. Making the dominant man such a beautiful, rich, successful power figure just clouds the issue, to the extent this film presents an issue at all.

Despite savagely flogging the English language on the goshbedarned regular, I don’t actually know much about BDSM — but I’m nonetheless confident that this film gets it all wrong. No matter. It’s more about pandering to that curious housewife “zeitgeist” than truth in any form.

Haus Verdict: Deeply annoying if you think about it, but honestly not as terrible as I expected.