A Review of 50 Shades of Grey

25/50 Shades of Grey.

The Twilight fan-fiction novel-turned film Fifty Shades of Grey was released to most theaters across the United States this Valentine’s Day weekend, gaining a whopping $90.7 million over those two days and attracting an audience of over 60 percent female.

The film is an adaptation from E.L. James’ novel published in 2011 with the same title.

As far as entertainment goes, it did that well. One who has never read the series and who is basing expectations on the previews of the film could be a bit bored until about the 40-minute point. From then on, the movie gets wildly more interesting.

The film covers the story of Anastasia Steele, a college student who goes to interview a young business connoisseur named Christian Grey. Grey gains a sense of attraction to Steele, and begins the attempt to get closer to her.

Once the couple admits their attraction, and things start heating up, Grey proposes a contract for Steele.

The contract is an agreement that Steele must abide by Grey’s demands concerning her body and their sexual interactions. While she takes time to go over the details, Grey bothers her mercilessly about it.

The catch is, the sexual interactions are a bit unusual to Steele. They are demanding that she is the submissive to Grey’s dominant BDSM (bondage and discipline, sadism and maschism) sexual desires.

It got to the point of Grey stalking while Steele weighted out her options. Once they were in the main section of the film, Grey was abusive and too demanding for Steele. His desires grew and she began to get nervous.

The ending was one of the only enjoyable messages out of the entire film, but it also left audience members a bit hopeless considering there are two more books to be adapted into films.

As far as hope goes - one can only hope that audiences do not portray Mr. Grey’s sexual attempts as romance.

A dominant, controlling, stalking and abusive man is not romantic, it is psychotic. That could be the message of the entire film - a satire over the population’s obsession with the love triangle in Twilight.

Overall, the film did an alright job with bringing forward entertainment. It relied heavily on sex to bring its audience any type of enjoyment. The only enjoyable dialogue that kept people awake was the dirty talk between Mr. Grey and Ms. Steele.

There were many opportunities for Anastasia to represent feminism in a positive light, but they were ignored with her desire to be with Grey.

He requested complete dominance and control over her life, and there were a few times when she broke away, but she always came running back.

As long as audiences take this with the idea of entertainment only, and not dig in too deep over whether or not Grey’s actions should be considered “romance,” this film will do well with the world.