Two films opened during the Valentine’s weekend with hopes of becoming the box office blockbuster of choice, but neither is a traditional date-night romance. One feeds into typical male fantasies, while the other is based on a series of books that has had women swooning for three years. Which won at the box office opening weekend? And more importantly, which is the better film? We decided to switch things up and invite a man to review Fifty Shades of Grey while our entertainment editor, a woman, reviews Kingsman.
First up is the film that met with the most pre-release outrage. Reviews of Fifty have been published with titles such as “Fifty Shades of Smut,” “Fifty Shades of Shame,” and even “Fifty Shades of Dull.” In fact, Fifty Shades of Greyhas met with so much uproar that Kingsman: The Secret Service slipped right under the radar of the morality police. The authors of these reviews have good reason to be concerned about the long-term effects of pornography, especially pornography that focuses on violence. But does Fifty Shades of Grey, edited to receive an R rating rather than NC-17, really fit the definition? We asked film historian Steven DeRosa for his review.
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Fifty Shades of Grey
How does one review the cinematic qualities of a cultural phenomenon? A good rule of thumb is to forget the phenomenon and judge the film on its own merits. In that regard, Fifty Shades of Grey succeeds on a certain level, but suffers under the restraints — no pun intended — of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s direction and Kelly Marcel’s screenplay. As a movie, Fifty Shades is entertaining to a degree, titillating to an extent, but falls short of the mark in terms of its aspirations. No, Fifty Shades was not aiming to be serious art, but in the spirit of its Valentines’ Day weekend opening, this should have been a fun, sexy romp.
At the outset, allow me to disclose that I have not read E.L. James’s novel. I should also state that I teach cinema studies at a liberal arts college and include in my curriculum the Steven Shainberg film Secretary (2002). The reason I bring this up is that the character portrayed by James Spader in that film bears the name E. Edward Grey. I am often asked by students if there is a correlation between Spader’s Grey and the Grey of Fifty Shades, to which there is no easy answer. Was E.L. James inspired by Secretary?
Grey is somehow so charmed by Anastasia’s naiveté, awkwardness, and lip biting that he later stalks her and shows up at the small-town hardware store where she works.
Decades ago, Hollywood churned out weepy melodramas known as “women’s pictures.” While scarcer, they are still made, and are now referred to as chick flicks. Fifty Shades fits into this category in that it expects its predominantly female audience to identify with the protagonist, Anastasia Steele, whose aim is not so to much attain the unattainable as to tame the untamable. On its most basic level, Fifty Shades succeeds in doing that, yet the film has significantfailings, caused largely by several faults of dramatic structure and partly by a lack of chemistry between the two leading characters, as portrayed by Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.
The film opens on clumsy, doe-eyed Anastasia Steele, an English major substituting for her friend, journalism major Kate, who was to interview 27-year-old billionaire Christian Grey for their school newspaper. Anastasia literally stumbles into Grey’s office, and for whatever reason he feels compelled to take pity on her and help her conduct the interview. Grey is somehow so charmed by Anastasia’s naiveté, awkwardness, and lip biting that he later stalks her and shows up at the small-town hardware store where she works. Here she helps him with his shopping list of serial killer supplies — two sizes of duct tape, a package of zip ties, and rope. Rather than being alarmed by this, Ana is intrigued.
The odd stalker-like behavior continues when Christian sends Ana a rare edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and shows up to “rescue” her one night when she drunk-dials him from a club. All of this is leading to Christian’s deflowering of Ana, which comes far too soon. Some of the most romantic movies ever made succeeded simply by keeping the lovers at a distance until it was almost excruciating — think of James Stewart kissing and then losing and losing again Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, or Daniel Day-Lewis unbuttoning Michelle Pfeiffer’s glove to kiss her exposed wrist in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence.
Even Secretary had the good sense to concentrate on small, intimate details of the characters. At the end of that film’s first spanking scene, there is a closeup of the dominant’s hand brushing against the submissive’s, and she responds by interlocking her pinky with his. This attention to character detail is absent from Fifty Shades, in favor of scenes showing off Grey’s toys, and not the ones in his “Red Room of Pain.” The scenes involvea more conventionalhelicopter and glider, piloted by him. Grey beds Steele so early in Fifty Shades that, again, there is no tension — dramatic, sexual, or otherwise.
If Ana Steele’s goal is to domesticate Christian Grey and turn him into boyfriend material — someone who will take her out to dinner and a movie, cuddle up with her on the couch, and spoon with her on a cold winter’s night — he reveals to her too soon that all of this is a distinct possibility. “If you agree to be my submissive, I’ll be devoted to you,” says Grey. There simply is no tension built up to suggest otherwise. After all, he sleeps in the same bed with her that first night, in spite of protestations that he never does that. If Ana plays along, she’ll be able to top from the bottom for the rest of her days with Grey.
Even after the relationship has already been consummated, this bizarre courtship continues with Grey presenting a contract to Ana so they can solidify terms such as safe words, sleeping arrangements, and which activities and toys she will allow Grey to subject her to or use on her. Oddly, the contract negotiation scene is both funny and sexy and one of the few memorable scenes in the movie. The sex and domination scenes do little to connect the audience with either character, so those scenes fall flat.
If Ana plays along, she’ll be able to top from the bottom for the rest of her days with Grey.
Perhaps the most fatal flaw in Fifty Shades is that it barely scratches the surface of its Christian Grey. At one point in the story, Grey confesses to Ana details about “the woman who gave birth to him.” It is a moment in the movie that is quickly glossed over, but is supposed to begin to explain something of the character’s backstory. “I had a rough start in life. That’s all you need to know,” hesays. And that’s all we get to know. Thevulnerability caused by this void is an element not fully explored, at least not in this installment, which is obviously a setup for two sequels to come.
Was Fifty Shades of Grey going to be the movie that put BDSM in the mainstream? No. Were sales of wrist restraints and riding crops going to skyrocket overnight? Probably not. Fifty Shades of Grey misses the opportunity to be a very talked about movie for the simple reason that it is so antiseptic and watered down that it could never live up to the imaginations of readers who devoured E. L. James’s books. — Steven DeRosa
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Kingsman: The Secret Service
Who needs Mr. Grey when you can have Mr. Darcy? Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most romantic stories ever written, and Colin Firth, who played the dashing and noble Mr. Darcy in the 1995 made-for-TV miniseries, stars as Harry Hart in this homage to James Bond.
Hart is certainly dashing in his impeccable Saville Row suits, and he’s noble too — quite often he sets his umbrella gun to “stun” instead of “AK-47” mode when he’s engaged in battle.
Firth, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of King George VI (The King’s Speech, 2010) is usually cast in more dignified roles, but he is surprisingly perfect as Harry Hart: he is elegant and edgy, unintentionally funny, and sports a newly trimmed-down physique that makes his action sequences — 80% of which he did himself — believable. (Well, as believable as 200 corpses in a single fight can be.)
Hart is one of an elite group of British spies trained in spectacular martial arts whose purpose is to save the world from dastardly masterminds who would rather see it destroyed. In this story, their nemesis is Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson). Hart? Valentine? Now you understand why the film opened this particular weekend.
The violence is so over the top that it’s cartoonish rather than gruesome, but still — I was looking for my “safe word.”
Kingsman contains all the ingredients of a James Bond film: the evil mastermind who has a physical deformity (Valentine speaks with a lisp); the sultry villainess who has a deadly physical specialty (Valentine’s sidekick, Gazelle [Sofia Boutella], has blades instead of feet and slices her opponents with the accuracy of a delicatessen chef); the spectacular opening scene that is actually the end to a previous episode; multiple exotic settings around the globe; cartoonish fights and chase scenes; and an evil plan that will destroy the world if the master villain isn’t stopped in time.
Writer-director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, Snatch) adds a twist to the James Bond homage by focusing this plot on the recruitment of a new crop of Kingsmen — sort of X-Men: First Class Goes to Spy School. Hart sponsors a smart but troubled teenager named Eggsy (Taron Egerton) as his protégé, and Eggsy is soon part of group of wise-ass teenagers competing against one another in deadly tasks for the honor of becoming a Kingsman.
Meanwhile, the official Kingsmen are engaged in trying to thwart Valentine’s evil plan to dominate the world, and soon the two groups (what’s left of them) join forces. I should probably give you a warning: V may be for Valentine, but it’s also for Violence. Vaughn is the director of Kick Ass, after all. He goes for edgy. The violence is so over the top that it’s cartoonish rather than gruesome, but still — I was looking for my “safe word.” In addition to sliced limbs and spurting blood, you’ll find 50 shades of grey matter exploding in this film, as well as a fireworks display you aren’t likely to forget. And that church scene? It’s all done in a single take. Now that’s impressive.
So who wins the Valentine’s Day contest? RottenTomatoes gives Kingsmen: The Secret Service a 71% critics’ rating, while Fifty Shades of Grey earned a mere 26%. Splat. But the box office tells a different story. Kingsmen earned $35 million during opening weekend, while Fifty Shades brought in more than twice that much, $81 million — and Kingsmen had an extra day, opening on Thursday instead of Friday. It will be interesting to see which film has more staying power in the theaters; I suspect that everyone who was panting to see Mr. Grey has already had enough. — Jo Ann Skousen
