In theatres this weekend...
Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan star as submission'ed lovers in the much-hyped Fifty Shades of Grey, the Vancouver-shot Hollywood adaptation of E.L. James's bestselling erotic novel.
The film has received, to this point, close to universally negative reviews – however, the negative reviews are going viral, which can only be good news for a movie made to make money off a book that made money as a not-so-guilty pleasure.
"100 million copies sold must make a good movie, right? Wrong! Fifty Shades Of Grey is, quite simply, the worst movie I've ever seen," said movie reviewer Lisa Wilkinson on her Australian morning show. "Yes, Fifty Shades Of Grey is more appalling than appealing. It's domestic violence dressed up as erotica. And if there's one thing this movie is not, it's erotic."
But, like Wilkinson said, the book sold 100 million copies – 100,000 in England in one week, in fact. And she went to see it.
So the studio's winning, and critics be damned.
**********
Also in theatres...
- Colin Firth and Samuel L. Jackson star in Kingsman: The Secret Service, another Hollywood adaptation, this time of a comic book by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar.
- The Last 5 Years, a musical-comedy starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.