FIFTY SHADES OF MEDIOCRITY

In reviewing films for this blog I have had the pleasurable experience of seeing the good (Captain Philips, Guardians of the Galaxy), the bad (Let’s Be Cops, The Love Punch) and now, sadly, the ugly. This is not a review, I will not be going to see this ‘cinematic masterpiece’, and instead I would like to investigate why this film even exists. The book series by has become extremely popular (which is strange because no one I’ve met admits to reading it let alone buying it) and, as such, a film adaption was inevitable. Using this logic we can expect ‘Playboy the Movie’ next year. By all accounts the film is a rather tame affair; the filmmaker’s having decided to leave out some of the racier, and no doubt anatomically impossible, scenes from the book. Of course given that’s why anyone who has read the book will be reading it for (don’t lie) this means the film has to survive on its plot and characters - and we all know how much attention books in this genre pay to those (cue the plumber and the lonely housewife). In fact where the initial magnum opus actually came from might surprise some people, this book originally started as Twilight fanfiction (non-profit stories posted online using existing characters from other books). Apparently the author got encouragement from reviewers online and so adapted it into her own story. This would explain why the male lead is apparently so unlikable, and come to think of it why the female character is so easily led and wants to have a man boss her around. In a supreme twist of fate when Universal Studios sought legal means to block a pornographic parody of the Twilight movies, the makers of the porno version pointed out that as fanfiction is the public domain it was open to parody (their argument didn’t fly). This is all its takes these days to get a book deal, an internet story which got some good reviews (many of whom may well have been trolls). This is encouraging in its own strange way I suppose but it’s hardly one to encourage the youth of today (work hard enough and you can get your own schlock erotic fiction series!”)