Fifty Shades of Grey

 

Is that a metaphor or are you

just happy to see me?

Grade: D

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eloise Mumford, Luke Grimes and Marcia Gay Harden

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 50 min.

“Don’t forget your safe words,” Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) warns Anastasia 'Ana’ Steele (Dakota Johnson) before the tamest bondage montage this side of a Miley Cyrus video. Unfortunately, it’s the audience for Fifty Shades of Grey who need a safe word designed to rescue them from this film adaptation of writer E.J. James’ nightstand potboiler.

Although director Sam Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel mercifully scrub the bulk of Ana’s Twitter-worthy internal monologue that litters James’ prose, what remains is a flaccid affair with little plot, even less character development and kinkiness rendered into kitsch.

When Ana visits boy billionaire Christian to interview him for her college newspaper, there’s an instant attraction between them. Why is anyone’s guess. Because Ana is a terrible questioner? Because she’s a dowdy dresser? Because Christian is a rich, depraved misanthrope? Because he’s just rich?

What ensues is a Twilight-esque game of will she or won’t she allow let herself to be transfigured by a forbidden paramour. In this case, it’s signing the dotted line of a contract to become Christian’s submissive. Beguiled by Ana’s diffident innocence, Christian lavishes her with gifts, including a laptop, new car and first edition of “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” (though, strangely, nothing to replace her woefully outdated flip phone). Never mind that she’d be the 16th different occupant of his playroom of ropes, belts, shackles and riding crops.

A bevy of supporting characters quickly come and go. Marcia Gay Harden pops up as Christian’s mother, but little is made of their clearly tenuous relationship. Same with Ana’s roommate Kate (Eloise Mumford) and her dalliance with Elliot (Luke Grimes), Christian’s adopted brother. Much mention is made of the older woman who molested Christian as a youngster and instilled his predilection for sexual domination, but she’s never seen or even identified (named Elena Lincoln in the book). And the one instance Christian becomes rattled by a work-related crisis evaporates without resolution once he and Ana blow off some steam in the playroom.

But the fatal flaw of Fifty Shades of Grey is that we never understand, and thus never accept the inextricable sexual tension between the two leads. There’s nothing particularly special about Ana that should upset Christian’s deep-seated misogyny for the sake of a game of hard-to-get. Conversely, arrested emotional development is the only discernible reason Ana would remain in creepy Christian’s presence for longer than five minutes.

“Fifty shades of fucked up,” Christian mutters while self-diagnosing his psyche. He may as well have been describing this antiseptic, bawdy bore.

Whip It

Bring me a box of Tagalongs, pronto!

Grade: B –

Director: Drew Barrymore

Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, and Drew Barrymore

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 51 minutes

Ok, so it’s not exactly Juno on roller skates. Still, Whip It borrows heavily – like Smart People before it and undoubtedly many films after it – on typecasting Ellen Page as the spunky, whip-smart teen. While we look forward to Page expanding her role horizons, one thing is certain: She sure is great at playing a spunky, whip-smart teen.

While Whip It is entertaining in its own rite, Page carries the film on her pubescent back, overcoming numerous shortcomings brought on by a clichéd screenplay and some expected – and mostly excusable – floundering by debut director Drew Barrymore (who also costars).

Barrymore’s mistakes are not in spirit. Her film about a warehouse roller derby league in Austin, Texas treats its milieu with respect, presenting the all-female derby subculture not as an oddity but as misunderstood at worst and wicked awesome at best. Page is the treacly-named Bliss Cavender, a 17-year-old misfit who finds her calling in the roller rink under the moniker ‘Babe Ruthless' as a member of the rough-and-tumble Hurl Scouts, not in the assortment of teenage beauty pageants her reproving mom (Marcia Gay Harden) sticks her in.

While the film is imbued in female empowerment, Barrymore and screenwriter Shauna Cross (adapting her novel “Derby Girl”) conspicuous cast women – Bliss’ mom, her stuck-up high school friends, her roller rivals – as the antagonists. Meanwhile, men are generally shone in a sympathetic or even heroic light, including the derby team’s long-suffering coach (Andrew Wilson) and Bliss’ henpecked dad (Daniel Stern).

Most of the cast is up to task, including Alia Shawkat as Bliss’ best-friend and Kristen Wiig, who reigns in her sometimes annoying SNL persona for a subdued but hilarious performance. On the other hand, Barrymore’s excessive focus on BFF Jimmy Fallon as the derby’s carnival barker emcee grows wearisome well before his umpteenth pun falls flat.

Indeed, much of the humor in Whip It mirrors the same overbroad comedy Barrymore herself usually parades onscreen. A food fight, seriously? And, one scene in which Bliss’ dad shares a Fosters with his teenage daughter while they watch football on TV in the back of his van seems creepy coming from Barrymore given her well-chronicled history of childhood substance abuse.

The storyline itself is the same Bad News Bears entree mixed with a heavy dollop of Bend It Like Beckham and served with a passé boy-meets-girl side dish. And, while Barrymore wisely provides center stage to the action sequences, they often come across as a bit too choreographed.

Still, Whip It’s message overshadows its execution. And, before she turns the next page in her career, it is nice to see that Ellen Page doesn’t need Diablo Cody’s jabberwocky to carry a movie.

Neil Morris