Films > DVD Reviews

Fifty Shades of Grey

29/05/15

I once watched a puppy eat its own shit. I say “watched”, but, as one would hope, as soon as I realised what was happening I turned my head away from the sickening spectacle, retching. Presumably, once the puppy had digested this shit, he would have done another shit. A shit formed of shit. Shit-squared, if you will. For me, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ very much puts that shit in mind.

E. L. James’s first shit was the Twilight fan-fiction that FSoG grew from, and if there is a literary movement shittier than Twilight fan-fiction, I can’t think of it. Cannily, James changed the names and locations, got rid of the vampires and werewolves, and put in a load of pseudo-kinky bum-smacking sex. In doing so, she essentially lapped up her shit, re-percolated it through her creative alimentary canal, and squirted out three plopping great books of populist slap-and-tickle that, bewilderingly, became wildly popular with Kindle-fumbling divorcees and chuckling schoolgirls. The sale of pink fluffy handcuffs rocketed.

No surprise, then, that Hollywood has taken this shit-squared, swallowed it whole, and grunted out something best described as shit-cubed. Let’s face it; FSoG was never going to be well-written characters, snappy dialogue, and a compelling plot. Unfortunately, its only selling point – the sex – is so woefully mishandled, toned-down, and, well, unsexy, that all we are left with is a triple-shat turd leeched of all possible goodness and only marginally more erotic than a dog eating its own bum-gravy.