Rick McGinnis writes:
What hasn’t been discussed, though, is the simple fact that no one watches porn for the story while no one really watches a movie for the sex. With Fifty Shades, we have a film that, production values aside, is as dreary and rote as the most pretentious ventures in plot-heavy ‘70s eurosleaze like The Story of O – a film that Fifty Shades resembles in no small part.
As anyone who made films under the heavy hand of the Production Code from the ‘30s to the ‘60s will tell you, it takes a lot more skill not to show something onscreen – a fact that’s made both sex and horror onscreen less compelling as it’s become ever more explicit.