The highly popular "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie saga continued with the recent release of its second installment. Highly popular with certain #female demographics, the movies chronicle the hypocritical relationship of Anastasia and her suitor, Christian Grey. At the end of the first movie, the relationship status of the two characters is up in the air and while the second movie does a better job of at least making it seem that the sexual aspect of their relationship is pleasurable, it is does not dig any deeper. A movie that is sure to be panned by critics, this film lacks several key components which make a movie (at least) tolerable.
The screenplay makes it difficult to care about the characters
One of the key components of any movie is to make the audience sympathize or care about a character's journey. Whether John Coffey in “The Green Mile” or Nurse Ratchet in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a character’s choices reflect a deeper meaning that becomes apparent later in the film. In this movie, the characters of #Anastasia and Grey happen to meet each other at a party and even though he was horrible to her in the past, she decides to take him back. That plot point is not unique to a movie or even in real life, as many men and women take back partners. The biggest fault that I see in the Grey character is that he is controlling but not in a way that is at all endearing.
He stalks Anastasia and I sense that he may have placed a tracking chip in her phone because he seems to know where she is at all times. The screenplay is wordy but the characters do not seem to say much of anything. The dialogue revolves around them being together or questioning the status of their relationship. There are also certain situations like with Anastasia and her boss that made me feel uncomfortable as a viewer.
The cartoonish dialogue had a lot to do with it.
Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson deserve better material
As a viewer, I could tell that Dornan and Johnson were trying their very best to make these quite one-dimensional character have some sort of depth. This movie does an injustice to two young viable actors that have produced great work recently.
Dornan stared in “The Fall” and showed great range and the ability to keep up with a heavy weight like Gillian Anderson. Johnson is newer to Hollywood but in one film of hers “How to Be Single” she also showed that she can carry a movie and dig deeper. Although the movie revolves around sex, there are layers and emotions that were vacant throughout the entirety of the film. You can have a completely unlikeable or immoral character but still portray their actions with some kind of complexity. Neither character seems to evolve and there is a certain redundancy to the plot that (in some ways) tests the intelligence of the audience. This movie was difficult to sit through, and although it might be too late, someone needs to help breathe life into this project. You know something is wrong when "Lego Batman" beats you at the box office.
