50 Shades of Grey (2015)

I've never seen a movie work an audience the way 50 Shades of Grey did. It was a cinema packed with women, me and five friends the only guy group in there (don't ask). It strung the audience along like a great jazz player: with its obvious innuendos, its slow hints to what everyone knew was coming, and eventually the scenes of two attractive young actors doing it. I could say I hated this movie but I'm pretty sure most did, even the women in our showing were grunting when the lights came on (and not out of pleasure), but I didn't expect to like it going in (again, don't ask) - I was disappointed though, at how little fun this jazz player was having with us.

In an early scene, Christian Grey, a young billionaire businessman with a clean if mysterious image, enters a DIY store where Anastasia, a uni student he met by chance, is working. It's obvious what he's there for. He plays the game anyway - in his deep, smooth voice he asks for: cable ties, masking tape and rope. She asks if he's doing some decorating - not quite. Then she tries to do some flirting herself, with a clumsy line about handymen; which is weird only because it's rare to see a movie admitting both sexes stumble while flirting. It's a funny scene, one that has the audience in on a joke that our innocent female lead cluelessly misses. If only the people working on this scene had realized how naturally tongue-in-cheek the material was, and if only the rest of the movie had played around in its own ridiculousness. 50 Shades is a very "if only..." movie.

You could argue that this movie had a right to be serious: that female sexuality needs more than tongue-in-cheek, especially since the only sex focused films to ever make it as big as 50 Shades are 70s women-degrading shlock like Deep Throat and Emmanuelle; and 50 Shades, despite being about a man who wants be the "dominant" to a girl he hopes will sign a contract to become his "submissive", works as a woman's empowerment movie. In the end, the man is left wanting the relationship and the woman is the one who's had a sexual adventure and decided to end things there. I guess me criticizing the movie itself would be pointless as it wasn't made for me, and that complaining would only be whinging I wasn't part of an audience that women are left out of nine times out of 10.

50 Shades is already a go-to term for over-the-top BDSM, the same way to most mainstream audiences Brokeback Mountain is "that gay cowboy movie" and some mean connotations. But turning these things into jokes is just a way to ignore what they're saying. Brokeback Mountain did have a lot more to say, because it was a much better movie. 50 Shades is poorly made: the script not even in on its own joke; the ending an obvious ploy to leave things open for the sequel; two uninteresting stars cast as two very simplistic characters. But like I've said, I could only speculate on how women, the film's audience, found this movie; and on contemplation, regardless of quality, the movie does more good than not.