Fifty Shades of Dull
<span>The movie adaptation of E. L. James’s bestseller succeeds in toning down the book’s most egregious elements—but reveals that there’s very little left underneath.</span>
Has there ever been lower-hanging fruit than the cinematic adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey? The movie has tens of millions of devoted fans set to queue up, and tens of millions more wondering what all the fuss is about. And … how to put this delicately? It couldn’t possibly be as bad as the book.
And, indeed, director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation is not nearly as painful an experience as E. L. James’s novel. The author’s sub-leaden prose is gone, thank goodness, as is the of her 21-going-on-14 protagonist, Anastasia Steele. There are no s, s, s,s, or es; no s or s or es. There’s no mention of Ana’s “inner goddess,” let alone of it “doing the merengue.” For this, we
