BELATED REVIEW OF FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

year: 2015 rating: *

At one point, when Christian Grey, a hot young millionaire with skeletons in the closet… actually, an entire roomful… has to fess up to his new girlfriend, Anastasia Steele, about what exactly makes him tick, he bursts out with: “I’m 50 Shades of f---ed up!”

Well there are way more than fifty flaws in this unintentionally hysterical howler, taking an already thin plotline and starving it into a porno film setup where the two leads quickly meet in an interview… she’s doing a paper on him… and then he’s following her to work, purchasing equipment to “use” later on… Or not so later on. Before we know what the big deal is about this mysteriously famous recluse, he’s already a jealous boyfriend showing her the ropes – literally!

The acting is perhaps the worst ever witnessed, and that's by someone who loves bad acting. With parents like Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, it’s a shock daughter Dakota has such dull chemistry with a camera lens. Even her "best" moments are like she's failing a screen test. In fact, every scene has a contrived, prompted aura. You can almost hear the reverberation of the director yelling “Action.”

Well there’s plenty of action, but even the controversial sex scenes, evolving into whips and chains and cuffs and other such devices, seem more like sealing the envelope for shocked young girls than pushing it for adults who savored the novels while their husbands were sleeping. Meanwhile, the lead actor, Jamie Dornan, is Brando compared to the headlight-stunned starlet, and yet he rarely stretches beyond a steel-chinned glare that, in trying to intimidate the girl he’s out to control, is like beating a dead horse... with no legs. OVERALL RANK: Jedi, Rebel, Droid, Sith, Bantha Fodder.