Starring:  Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle, Eloise Mumford, Victor Rasuk, Luke Grimes, Rita Ora, Marcia Gay Harden.

Rated: R.  Drama/Romance.  Running Time: 2 hours 5 minutes.

If you follow us here at MRSRAG, you might remember our scathing review of E.L. James’ preposterously, poorly written book, Fifty Shades of Grey.  Maria and I couldn’t have hated it more, which might lead you to ask: “Why rent the movie then?”  Let’s call it curiosity and the belief that the movie could not possibly be as bad as the book.  The filmmakers indeed stayed true to the book, and in turn created one of the worst pieces of cinema ever made.  Epically bad.  If you aren’t already familiar with the story of  young billionaire Christian Grey (Dornan) and mousy literature student Anastasia Steele (Johnson), and their warped “Dominant”/”Submissive” relationship; I implore you to stay away!   As truly horrible as the book was, the casting of these two is “perfect” in keeping with the theme of putridness that had been set.  The bar was set as low as possible, yet they somehow limbo danced under it anyway.  Jamie Dornan shouldn’t be allowed in a dog food commercial, and Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith’s girl Dakota, surely has to have her parents hiding their faces in shame.  The bottom line for me is, even if the book had been well written, the movie well acted, I can’t understand the audience for this material.  I know there is a market for romance novels, too many people in this world have no spark in their lives, that genre fills a need.  But this soft porn nonsense?  Who needs it?  If you want to rub one out, male or female, there is so much porn out there on the internet for free, you can play with yourself until your hands ache.  What are you getting from Christian and Anastasia?  They have no personality.  They have no chemistry.  There is no romance, only a little rough sex that isn’t all that rough to be honest.  So, what’s the draw here?  I admit it, I’m confused, because Fifty Shades of Grey is fucking horrendous!!!

Christian Grey is an asshole. And let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment ladies: if he wasn’t disgustingly rich, he’d be a total creeper. So, because he owns a helicopter, runs a business and flies G5’s, we can excuse his unacceptable behavior? And answer to his ridiculously condescending terms: ‘submissive shall not consume alcohol to excess, submissive shall not partake in recreational drugs’ etc. How about you GFY? And after all of this written consent, ‘red tape’ and other contractual bullshit, he doesn’t even deliver. He’s like a sad shell of a sadist, if you’re into that type of thing. If you want to see an accurate and erotic depiction of sadism, please rent “The Secretary” starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, instead. That film delivers, without polluting the story with horrible dialogue and implausible plotlines. Anastasia is a fumbling, clumsy, grade A rip off of Bella Swan. I’ve read that E.L. James based her novel off of the Twilight series, but if you’ve read that collection of books, then you know they should not even be mentioned in the same sentence. Stephanie Meyer can actually write. Some people I love, like and respect, enjoy these books, but I don’t know how. They are SO bad, and the movie somehow matched this atrocious set of novels. I suggest if you’re looking for some smut literature, you talk to my best friend, Gina Gallo. She is the authority on well written smut. Well written being the key term.

Speaking of alternatives, you can easily get the same entertainment value of Fifty Shades almost any late night on Cinemax (aka Skinemax). The bad acting, shitty sex scenes and cheesy dialogue are spot on, and the quality may actually be superior to FSOG (which is insane because Skinemax is laughably bad.) The most egregious thing the filmmakers did in making this movie, wasn’t adapting a rotten book, or casting “D” actors. It wasn’t the miserable score or implausable plot. No, it was having the balls to make the piece of shit over 2 hours long! We can never get that time back, but at least it only cost us $1.59 from the Redbox.

I did get a nice belly laugh and snort from the dialogue during the first few minutes. But those laughs are cheap and get tiresome quickly. The most genuinely entertaining couple of minutes in the film, where they were actually trying to get laughs, is when they conduct a ‘business meeting’ about the terms laid out in Grey’s contract for Ms. Steele. That’s literally all it has to offer, which lasts all of about 30 seconds. Obviously the target audience is women, but what I can’t wrap my mind around is how well educated, bright and beautiful ladies are eating this garbage up! In my honest opinion, I’d have to assume that the majority are single. And if not, their male counterparts are not taking care of them properly. Sorry, but IMO that is the only explanation for how anyone could find anything enjoyable about this trash.  In fact, the best explanation I have heard is from the smut authority, Gina Gallo.  Perhaps she will enlighten us all with a detailed comment presenting her insightful perspective.  I’ve just recently heard that a new book is coming out shortly called, “Grey”. I’ll be sure to pick up a copy on the off chance that we run out of toilet paper. But the pages will most certainly already be covered in shit.

Ross’ Rating: .5 Gummy Bears out of 5.

Maria’s Rating: 0 Gummies.