So, how was it for you? After all the hype and all the anticipation, Fifty Shades of Grey is here at last, and we can finally find out what Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of EL James’s multi-million-selling erotic novel is like. Is it bad, or really bad, or really, really bad? Or, stranger things have happened, is it actually quite good? The answer is simple: we won’t be able to assess Fifty Shades of Grey until it’s finished.

Officially, of course, the film is done and dusted – and it certainly lasts the standard two hours – but when you leave the cinema you feel as if you’ve seen nothing but a very protracted opening sequence. You’re introduced to the central duo, Anastasia ‘Ana’ Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), but their story is cut off without being resolved. You meet nine or 10 of their friends and relatives, but you learn nothing about any of them. Unlike the characters, the film never reaches a satisfying climax.

Still, what you do learn is that Ana, a senior at a university in the Pacific Northwest, is studying English literature. Her roommate, Kate (Eloise Mumford), is a journalism student who is due to interview Christian, an exceptionally young and handsome billionaire business leader. But when Kate is laid up with a sniffle, Ana goes in her place, presumably because the university’s journalism department doesn’t have a single other student. Christian’s office is in a Seattle skyscraper which he owns, but Ana never asks how he made his colossal fortune, or, indeed, why he bases his wardrobe choices on his surname. As a fully qualified journalist, I couldn’t help but tut at her incompetent interviewing technique. But then, nobody I’ve interviewed has ever gone on to buy me a car, so maybe she knows something I don’t.

The point is, anyway, that even though Christian’s personal assistants are all high-heeled models who look like they have just sashayed out of a Robert Palmer video, he is immediately smitten by the frumpy, clumsy Ana. Ana is a virgin, but she immediately acquiesces when Christian says he has to "rectify the situation”. And so we come to the crux of Fifty Shades of Grey: the sex. There’s undoubtedly more nudity than in a standard 21st Century Hollywood movie, but it’s less explicit and less passionate than what Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone got up to in Basic Instinct more than 20 years ago. It’s also less unorthodox, which is a surprise, given that edgy sex is the novel’s main selling point. 

For those of you who have resisted James’s book and its two sequels, Christian is a "dominant” who asks Ana to be his "submissive”. He doesn’t want them to have a conventional relationship, he just wants to tie her up and whip her in his "playroom” (which, oddly enough, is red, rather than grey). Ana is tempted – the new car probably helped – but she has her concerns. Is Christian planning to take control of her life? And is his sadomasochism rooted in deep psychological problems?

It’s a promising subject for an erotic thriller, but the film neutralises the danger that might have made it thrilling. Christian is supposed to be an unstoppable alpha male, but there is a softness to Dornan’s face and manner which precludes him from being an unnerving master of the universe. Christian Bale in American Psycho would eat him for breakfast, maybe even literally. But the fact that Christian Grey is so much less imposing than Christian Bale isn’t entirely Dornan’s fault. In general, the film itself also fails to convince us of his world-conquering authority. His corporate headquarters aren’t glamorous enough. His apartment isn’t luxurious enough. He may take Ana for a ride in a helicopter and a glider, but we’re never dazzled by his wealth, and Taylor-Johnson, despite being a Turner-nominated artist, doesn’t gild the film with any more style than a cut-price network sitcom. 

Christian isn’t even very dominant about being a dominant. Having declared that he is too cold and hard for romantic gestures, he wastes no time in introducing himself to Ana’s parents, offering to take her out on dates, and basically being far more chivalrous than the average billionaire. As for the vaunted sadomasochism, it amounts to a bit of light flogging – and only when he has Ana’s consent. Much of the film consists of the lovebirds negotiating the terms and conditions of her sexual servitude, and while these scenes do have a nicely flirtatious frisson they leave Fifty Shades in a muddle. Is it a dark psychosexual melodrama about an irresistible sadist who tortures an innocent victim? Or is a cheeky romantic comedy about a feisty gal and her kinky new boyfriend? Is it Fatal Attraction or is it Pretty Woman? Taylor-Johnson can’t decide.

Sometimes she expects us to be appalled that anyone might venture away from the missionary position, but at other times there are jokes about whether rope or duct tape is preferable for bondage. Johnson (the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith) sparkles during the comic sequences: she rescues much of James’s notoriously clunky dialogue by giggling and grimacing at the silliness of it all. But her jovial eagerness only makes the film’s final jolt into grimly judgemental territory seem ridiculous. Perhaps the two sequels will get the wobbly tone sorted out. They may even give Ana and Christian’s relatives something to do. The current film on its own, though, is so incomplete that cinema-goers should only have to pay for a third of a ticket. And even that might not be value for money.

(BBC)