Whereas the novel treats their relationship with a seriousness others might reserve for Bible study, Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel see what’s funny in this fetishistic scenario. As you’re doubtless aware, it’s the story of a virginal, romantic English major, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), who gets involved with a handsome, uptight, controlling billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) who doesn’t do hearts and flowers-he’s into handcuffs and floggers. Then the lights went down, and guess what? Fifty Shades of Grey turned out to be not just entertaining-at least until the clunky, exasperating final minute-but it also knows exactly what it’s doing. Critics prepared their snide jokes in advance I’d already worked up a riff on the history of lousy sex movies. At the best of times, it’s hard to adapt a popular novel for the screen, and here was a massive bestseller stuffed with scads of BDSM action-this in an era when Hollywood movies have become all spandex and no sex. As if that weren’t enough, the whole enterprise seemed ripe for disaster. We’d heard that director Sam Taylor-Johnson didn’t see eye-to-eye with E. We’d all heard reports that stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan had no chemistry.

Yes, you heard a few scattered female whoops when the film finally started, but until then, every person you talked to had a bad feeling. But the air couldn’t have been deader at the Fifty Shades of Grey preview last night at the ArcLight. If you go to a lot of Hollywood screenings, you know there’s a special trembling in the air when the audience expects the movie to be good.

Original fifty shades of grey contract