After months of hype, Fifty Shades Of Grey mania hit fever pitch at the film's world premiere in Berlin.
Screaming fans scrambled to get a selfie on the red carpet with stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson, who play Christian Grey and his lover Anastasia Steele.
Fifty Shades Of Grey Credit: Fifty Shades Of Grey However the reviews of the much anticipated movie have been lukewarm at best. Here is a look at some of the critical reaction.
Ultimately this is a Hollywood film, and it follows a three act structure and has a morality that would satisfy the writers of the Hays Code. By European art-house standards, this seems rather tame, yet within the limits of Hollywood Taylor-Johnson has pushed them as far as she can and comes up against a brick wall that resist anything truly changing.
Fifty Shades Of Grey Credit: Fifty Shades Of Grey Mr. Dornan has the bland affect of a model, by which I mean a figure made of balsa wood or Lego. What vitality “Fifty Shades of Grey” possesses belongs to Ms. Johnson, who is a champion lip-biter and no slouch at blushing, eye-rolling and trembling on the verge of tears.
It proves that age-old saw that great books rarely make great films, whereas barely-literate junk can turn into something ripe and even electric on screen. The lead performances and sleek style choices sell it almost irresistibly to the target audience, but the film has the confidence to end bruisingly unresolved, with the structural equivalent of a slap in the face.
Sitting through the turgid and tedious S&M melodrama that is Fifty Shades of Grey may feel like its own form of torture.
Fifty Shades Of Grey Credit: Fifty Shades Of Grey 30 minutes into Fifty Shades of Grey I realised what the real inspiration for the film is: Victoria Wood’s famously dark and disturbing song about the transgressive ecstasy of turning off Gardener’s Question Time in expectation of being bent over your hostess trolley, and beaten on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly.
Despite the hype and the sex scenes filmed in full-screen buttockarama, the most anticipated release of the year is not much more than a spanking great bore.
