Dom and substandard

So, I’ve seen a lot of people reading Fifty Shades of Grey these last few years.

I’ve seen them reading it at airports, reading in their front yards while the kids are at play, reading while driving their cars on the freeway, reading at church with the book cleverly tucked in their hymnals, reading while violently kickboxing and, most notably, reading in public lavatories while jovially humming (very unsettling, that jovial humming).

Everybody, everywhere has been reading that crazy book where the girl gets all bondage-like with the rich guy harboring major, major mommy issues.

The Fifty Shades phenomenon has been impossible to avoid, and that virus has now spread to movie screens. While I managed to avoid the book as if it were an ill-tempered grizzly bear infected with Ebola and brandishing a shotgun, the cinema now beckons, so off to the Red Room of Pain I go.

Subbing for her sick roommate, mousy college student with a porn name Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), who is so innocent she doesn’t know what a butt plug is, goes to Seattle to interview billionaire business guy douchebag Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). Grey’s offices are immaculate and adorned with supermodels. The place is also riddled with fancy pencils that have GREY stenciled on them, so that when Anastasia erotically sticks one in her mouth, its sort of like she’s sucking on Grey’s dick.

Shortly after the interview, Grey starts stalking Anastasia at the hardware store where she works, but that’s OK because he has billions of dollars and looks like the result of a night of passionate lovemaking between Ryan Phillippe and Eric Bana. I mean, let’s face it, if Grey looked like Zach Galifianakis and only had a quarter in his pocket, straight to jail he would go for such behavior.

His psychotic courtship eventually winds up with Anastasia becoming his prospective bondage slave. He offers her a formal contract that, if she signs, will allow him to be the dominant and her the submissive in a kinky sex relationship that will involve spanking, humiliation, nipple clips and eating toast in bed.

The sex scenes eventually happen and, if anything, they provide some good, hearty laughs. While the screenplay doesn’t explain much, Grey’s sexual proclivities and needs to abuse his mate have something to do with his being a crack baby. So I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for him when he’s torturing his girlfriend because his mom was a stupid crack whore. Fair enough.

When people aren’t having sex in this movie, which is quite often as things turn out, they talk in a somber, slow, irritatingly elongated manner. Everybody in this movie is a mopey, sodden sop. I love Seattle, but watching how residents behave and communicate in this movie makes me never want to visit the city again, even if the Mariners make the playoffs.

On the subject of Grey’s dick again, take note: Dornan signed a “no dick whatsoever … sorry!” clause, so he never whips it out on screen. There’s plenty of Dornan ass, and Dornan chest, and Dornan chin scar, but no Dornan dick. So any of you out there highly anticipating a chance to see some massive Dornan dick will have to score a real life date with the guy, because there is no Dornan dick to be found in this flick. The guy could be a eunuch for all we know.

The movie sort of just ends at the just over two-hour mark. Yes, those of you who get intensely, emotionally involved in the plights of Anastasia and Christian will have to wait, Empire Strikes Back style, for the sure-to-happen sequel. Frantic negotiations have no doubt commenced with Dornan to get him to show the dick.

I saw Fifty Shades of Grey on a Valentine’s Day late-night showing. I suspect there might’ve been some tug jobs and fingerbanging going on in the theater since it was the sweetheart holiday and, well, I heard grunting and snorting. If there were various acts of covert sex commencing around me, I’m pretty sure they were a thousand times more erotic and genuine than the hilarious supposed sexual antics occurring on screen.