Okay, so I was wrong — big deal! Fifty Shades of Grey (the movie) sucked. Who knew? My thought was when you start out with crap lines like “inner goddess” and “puckered love cave,” the only direction you have to go is up. It never occurred to me that the movie producers, directors etc. would find rock bottom and start to dig. My mistake.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been wr-wr-wr — not right, although I do stand by my definition of Mom Porn. (You can read about it here.) Actually, I’m relieved. Now that Mom Porn isn’t sweeping through suburbia like some pandemic itch, people can see the 50 Shades phenom for what it is: Twilight meets The Story of O — at WalMart.
Here are a couple of other thoughts.
You can fool all of the people some of the time. For nearly a year before the movie was released, 50 Shades was being touted as the ultimate erotic Valentine. Herded to the box office by the hype, an unsuspecting public was initially scammed out of 500 million dollars. However, within a week, attendance had crashed and the choruses of WTF were reaching a crescendo. Still, there is no limit to the cojones of contemporary Mad Men (and women.) In a blatant lunge for just a few dollars more, they released the DVD and Blu-Ray versions of the movie on May 8th — just in time for Mother’s Day! Their assumption was dad would add it to the flowers in the hope that mom would get a little frisky on her special day and that mom was dumb enough to fall for the old “deleted scenes” con. Cynicism, thy name is marketing!
Ironically, Universal actually sued Smash Pictures when the boys down at Smash announced they were going to produce a porno version of 50 Shades. Just take a moment and let that one sink in!
Ultimately, it comes down to this. Take Christian Grey out of his penthouse and three piece suit, put him in a trailer park in a t-shirt and jeans; then, turn Ana into a waitress at Denny’s and voila! Suddenly, you’ve got a book/movie franchise that’s actively promoting sexual abuse and violence against women. It’s amazing how perversion becomes erotic when you dress it up in Armani.
And finally, the best test of a good movie: is anybody talking about the sequel?
WD Fyfe 