Fifty Shades of Grey

Overlong, too clinical in design, and based on lowest common denominator entertainment (or so I'm told), Fifty Shades of Grey still manages to be engaging, funny, and unexpectedly human.

Given that this is her second film, [Sam] Taylor-Johnson directs the film with taste and care by focusing on the interactions between Ana and Christian rather than the sexual side of the story and the film looks stunning.

Fifty Shades of Grey will draw you in out of curiosity and possibly hopes of a good movie, then leave you wondering why you agreed to such a thing in the first place, much like the main character.

Funny that no one seemed to understand in the making of Grey that watching two vaguely defined characters engage in ceaseless rounds of conservatively filmed grimaces and stifled moans gets tiresome quickly.

There is little more critical than to say a third of the film had people laughing at dialogue, and the other two thirds wiggling in their seats, not from discomfort or innervation, but from boredom.