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Snark Squad Sentiments: The Fifty Shades of Grey Movie

Marines: When we finished recapping the entire Fifty Shades series, Sweeney and I decided to record vlogs discussing our feelings about the project as a whole. Sweeney put together a lovely video and it remains one of my favorite things ever. I… never did it. Blame some combination of permanent trauma and lack of words. After two years of recapping this series chapter by chapter, I had very little else to say.

This is probably my punishment, then, for having flaked out on that final vlog. Yes, I went to go see the movie and yes, I have more feelings than could truly be captured during my live-Tweeting, so yes, I’m doing the movie post. I also realize that the Internet has talked this entire thing to death and many people have already published their reviews and thoughts. Stick around, though, for: 1- for my take on the movie after being so, so familiar with the source material 2- a bonus little video and 3- an announcement!

Boregasm Plus:

We’ll start with the basics: this movie was awful.

There was little to recommend it from a strictly movie watching point of view. On the ride home, my friend asked me to try to think about the movie divorced from the source material. What if I’d just seen it and I had no idea how horrifyingly bad the books are? I thought about it for one second before I was 100% sure I’d still want my money back.

Leading up to the experience, I saw a lot online about how this movie wasn’t “as bad” as people expected or that it was “better” than the book. I want to clarify that here and now: any “improvement” of the movie over the book is from straight omission. There is very, very little the movie did to improve the source material. What people are actually saying is, “there were things they didn’t show us at all, which is better than if they had shown us.”

Um, yes. Good job, all you people. Not seeing the scene where he pulls out her tampon or not having her inner goddess doing gentle victorious sambas or not having her subconscious calling her (self) a whore was certainly better than seeing those things. A+ observation but that doesn’t actually say anything about the movie. 

Quickly, then, here is a plot synopsis of the movie: Anastasia Steele trips into Christian Grey’s office and has trouble breathing in his presence. Grey finds this super hot and decides he wants to know more about Ana so he stalks her enough to find out where she works. He visits her there, under the guise of patronage, even though the store is in another city. Grey invites Ana out for coffee and then warns her to stay away from him, even though he was the one who invited her out for coffee. Grey sends Ana “STAY AWAY FROM ME” gifts. Ana goes out to celebrate graduation and gets drunk. She decides to drunk dial Grey and he decides that drunkeness is enough cause to track her cell phone and find her. Ana passes out and Grey takes her back to his hotel room, clearly without her consent, where he undresses her and sleeps next to her, also without her consent.

After seeing Ana a total of 3 times, Grey decides he wants her real bad, but not for a cookie cutter relationship. See, Grey is a dominant and he wants Ana to be his submissive. He doesn’t want any kind of romantic relationship outside of that because of reasons. When Ana expresses concerns about being a submissive, he’s all, “WELL KEEP AN OPEN MIND, DAMMIT.”

Grey finds out Ana is a virgin and decides that even though she hasn’t signed his legally non-enforceable contract, he’s going to fuck her. He does. Then he asks if she’ll sign his contract. She’s concerned. Then he fucks her. Then he asks if she’ll sign his contract. She’s concerned. Then he fucks her. I lost track of how many times this happens.

Ana decides she needs a break from Grey so she goes to visit her mother in Georgia. GREY FOLLOWS HER THERE AND INTERRUPTS A LUNCH SHE’S HAVING WITH HER MOTHER, EVEN THOUGH NEITHER OF THEM TOLD HIM WHERE THEY WOULD BE.

Back in Seattle, Ana’s still concerned about the contract and Grey’s need to punish and hurt her. For some reason, she decides that she wants Grey to hit her as hard as he wants, so she knows if she’ll be able to take it. Note, this is not at all done in any sexual context. Grey just beats Ana, who, it turns out, is not a fan of being beaten. She breaks up with Grey and leaves. The end.

The one thing I will say was kind of an improvement was Dakota Johnson’s Anastasia Steele. In the book, Ana is dim, judgmental, bitchy, uncoordinated, and suffers from negative levels of self-esteem. Johnson plays Ana with what little charm could be found in the movie. Script tweaks helped in some ways (Ana actually owns a computer, it’s just broken), but there were moments when her idiocy shines through (Ana asks Grey what she should search for research on submissives. Grey’s all, “…submissives”).

For the first minutes of the movie, it was super fantastic that Ana seemed to be always on the verge of laughing at Grey. She giggles at him at times when he’s being really serious and intense and it was strangely great. It reached uncomfortable levels, however, when Grey’s behavior morphed from “saying stupid crap” to “being abusive.” To have that nervous, carefree giggle present when Grey was being emotionally manipulative was– less charming.

I’m not quite sure how to address my next point, other than to say that I’m a little afraid for and of the people who don’t see Christian Grey’s manipulation throughout the movie. To be sure, the full force of Grey’s abuse does not come through. Ana cries a lot in the book, thanks to the way Grey strings her along, physically punishes her (it’s not BDSM. It’s not not not not.) and generally messes with her head. Ana’s Tears are reduced to a couple of scenes in the movie. We don’t see Ana physically hurting from her first “punishment” like we do in the book. The parts about Grey controlling what she eats and where she goes and who her gynecologist is are glossed over or not referenced at all. The scene where he sells her car without her permission is reframed so that what we focus on is the shiny red car behind Grey as he offers Ana the keys.

Yes, that whole omission thing comes into play again so that scores of people were introduced to Christian Grey: Lesser Abuser and Bastard. But is there really a scale here? Truth is that there were plenty of, “YOU CREEPER!” moments. Here’s what we do see: face buried in Ana’s vagina, Grey asks if she’ll sign that contract, because he absolutely uses sex as a weapon and bargaining chip. Ana sends Grey a joking, “it was nice knowing you,” email and in the next scene we see him come out of a dark corner in her apartment. He let himself in, somehow, and was waiting for her with alcohol and manipulation sex. He warns her away and then sends her gifts. He tells her he isn’t romantic and doesn’t want a relationship and then brings her to family dinner. It all drips with a kind of subtext (or let’s face it, text) that made me cringe most of the viewing.

Jamie Dornan was painful to watch. I said when we dissected the trailer that he looked like he gained water weight in his face. That puffy, constipated look never really goes away, and I think it speaks to how uncomfortable the actor seems about the project. While Ana’s painfully naive dialogue are somewhat improved, Grey’s dialogue is only made more painful by Dornan’s half-assed delivery. I’m not sure who could really sell lines like, “fuck the paperwork,” “laters baby,” or “I’m fifty shades of fucked up,” but it isn’t Dornan.

There was a lot of laughter in my theater. When you are laughing at Grey, it really adds a whole new level of weirdness to the story. So often throughout the book, we wondered why Ana consistently stayed with Grey and ignored the red flags. The answer seemed to be (according to EL, at least) because Grey was magically delicious and perfect and awe-inspiring and there was something magnetic and steamy about him. Dornan came off as a joke. “I’d like to fuck you into the middle of next week,” he deadpans as he starts to undo his tie and all anyone could do was laugh.

The first 15 minutes of the movie were especially hilarious as the “relationship” is set-up with next to no meaningful dialogue between the characters. Grey seems to be instantly intrigued by this woman in his office just because she’s chewing on a pencil that has his name on it. They meet, he stalks her, they have coffee and we aren’t even privy to much conversation on their coffee date before he’s telling her to stay away from him. He’s showing her whips and floggers before the audience has any idea why Ana would even entertain this conversation.

Ana tries to let herself into Grey’s life for a “normal” relationship, but her idea of normal isn’t very at all. She presses him to share his childhood trauma and life story when we haven’t seen any other interactions between them. It isn’t even implied that they are getting to know each other or building anything except some oddly intense and ill-paced mess of a relationship.

The sex scenes… well, it wasn’t very prolific? I guess I expected it to be porn-ier. The lack of chemistry between the actors didn’t help the scenes and neither did the fact THAT WE NEVER KNOW WHY THESE PEOPLE LIKE EACH OTHER. Johnson is breathy and Dornan is face-pinched and that together doesn’t scream anything I find appealing. As the whips and ties and props came out, it became cheesier and cheesier and watching Dornan flog Johnson in slow motion… ha ha ha ha ha.

All of the minor characters were shams. I’m not even sure why they bothered casting other people in this movie. They kind of just stand around and let the weirdest things happen to Ana.

I had three outbursts while watching: 1- when Beyonce’s Crazy in Love started playing and I groaned very, very loudly. 2- When the characters went back to the Red Womb of Domestic Violence and the hymn was playing. I went, “OH GOD NOT THE HYMN.”

3- When Grey was waiting for Ana in her apartment and I said, “WHAT A CREEPER.”

Actually, that last outburst might’ve happened several times and some more powerful variation definitely happened in the last scene. Seeing it all played out overwhelmed me with awe at how nonsensical a story EL James created. Ana demands to know why Grey needs to hurt her and he is unable to answer her question. In tears, she decides to ask him to show her the worst of “BDSM” (this is not BDSM. Not not not not not.) so she can know if she can handle it. I knew that was coming and I still snorted my disbelief because it feels like such a non-sequitur. Again, I’ll stress that as Grey hits Ana with a belt, as he sweats and squirms and generally looks like a mass murderer, THERE IS NO SEXUAL CONTEXT. This is Grey straight hitting his girlfriend.

They break-up the next morning and we end with Ana and Christian saying each others names as an elevator door closes between them. I can’t imagine that people not familiar with the material felt particularly good about watching 125 minutes of pushing these characters together only to leave with them broken up.

So, should you go watch it? Even out of morbid curiosity? I would say no, probably not. I live-Tweeted the whole thing and still felt bored. Or if not bored, highly uncomfortable. Or if not highly uncomfortable, I was questioning all of my decisions up to that point. And I mean, if you want to pay $10 to feel those feelings, then okay. Maybe go see this movie. If not, skip it forever.

 

Should we get a notary in here?

Be sure to check out #50SoSnark for all my Tweets. If you have feels of your own about the movie, tag it #50SOSnark so we can all join in your laughter and suffering.

 

 

Do you own a face?

 

 

After Fifty Shades:

There probably will never be an opportunity for us to recap something exactly like Fifty Shades. It was such a perfectly terrible blend of all the worst things: bad fan-fiction, bad writing, bad characters, bad plot, socially irresponsible messaging AND IT WAS WILDLY POPULAR. We can surely find other bad things to snark, but probably nothing with quite as much reach or mass appeal as Fifty Shades.

We aren’t going to let that stop us, though. Everyone please welcome our next book selection, After by Anna Todd:

 

22557520Tessa is a good girl with a sweet, reliable boyfriend back home. She’s got direction, ambition, and a mother who’s intent on keeping her that way.

But she’s barely moved into her freshman dorm when she runs into Hardin. With his tousled brown hair, cocky British accent, tattoos, and lip ring, Hardin is cute and different from what she’s used to.

But he’s also rude—to the point of cruelty, even. For all his attitude, Tessa should hate Hardin. And she does—until she finds herself alone with him in his room. Something about his dark mood grabs her, and when they kiss it ignites within her a passion she’s never known before.

He’ll call her beautiful, then insist he isn’t the one for her and disappear again and again. Despite the reckless way he treats her, Tessa is compelled to dig deeper and find the real Hardin beneath all his lies. He pushes her away again and again, yet every time she pushes back, he only pulls her in deeper.

Tessa already has the perfect boyfriend. So why is she trying so hard to overcome her own hurt pride and Hardin’s prejudice about nice girls like her?  Unless…could this be love?

Now newly revised and expanded, Anna Todd’s After fanfiction racked up 1 billion reads online and captivated readers across the globe. Experience the Internet’s most talked-about book for yourself!

So, that’s a thing that’s happening! We’d love to give you a concrete timetable of when these will start publishing, but things have been a little hectic around Snark HQ. We haven’t nailed down a premiere date or recapper line-up quite yet, so be sure to follow us on Twitter and/or like us on Facebook to stay up to date with these and all other announcements.

I hope I am now forgiven for not making a Fifty Shades vlog. The real punishment was realizing how many details from the book I retained. I was capable of quoting dialogue.

Marines (all posts)

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.





Written by

Marines

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.