Fifty Shades of Black

The Fifty Shades of Grey, which this movie is spoofing, was nearly as bad as this one....Nearly. When i saw the preview for this movie i was actually excited to go and watch it. I eventually got tired of watching thrillers and action movies and wanted to just laugh at stupid people. The problem is i only got the stupid people part but no laughs.

It's was dull, egregious, embarrassing, and just plain stupid. The funny days of Scary Movie 1 and 2 are long gone for the creators of this crap fest. Their once promising comedy future has inevitably burned out.

I don not recommend this movie at all. Under no circumstances should anyone view this garbage. Side effects will include: abdominal pain, lower your IQ level, headache, anger, throwing objects at the screen, and financial bankruptcy.

A huge number of the black audience actually got up half way through the movie and walked out, but then there were only 15 people in the theater opening day, I wish i did the same but i stayed since i spend $22 dollars and was trying to get my money's worth. It wasn't. Watch Kung Fu Panda 3. You'll get more laughs and joy for your money. Cheers!

I have always been a huge fan of parodies, so I was looking forward to this movie. My expectations were realistic. Puns, slapstick humor, and generally sophomoric humor are fine by me. These parodies don't take themselves too seriously, and neither do I. The wife and I went to the theater expecting some lighthearted fun. But, what we saw was anything but fun or funny.

This film's attempts to parody the plot of Fifty Shades of Grey were overshadowed by the stilted dialogue, lame sight gags, and ineffectual attempts to get a rise out of the audience with tired racial stereotyping and racist humor. Sexual humor was expected. But I did expect some of it to be funny. It wasn't. Most of the gags in the film were greeted by dead silence in the theater and blank stares at the screen by my fellow theater goers.

We talked about walking out of the movie after the first scene, and every scene after that until we finally did walk out 20 minutes into the movie.

Maybe there was a funny joke in that movie later on, but I am sure I will not be giving this movie a second chance. It is one of the worst movies I have even seen.

"Fifty Shades of Black" (2016) is an entertaining film. The story is a direct parody of "Fifty Shades of Grey" where college student, Hannah Steele played by Kali Hawk, falls for unorthodox billionaire, Christian Black played by Marlon Wayans, but his sexual practices put a strain on what could become a beautiful relationship. The story is there for what could have been a heavy dose of comedy, but it doesn't seem to mesh well as the film could have.

The director, Michael Tiddes known for over the top comedies like "A Haunted House" (2013), stayed true the style of comedy. Ever comedic take had funny laced in the dialogue or visuals and then amplified to drive it home. Occasionally it was a bit much. The music that filled most of the film was very intertwining and relatively spot on but, there were a few lapses in the sound department. Some of the voice-overs missed the mark and took away from the film. Overall, it was just OK but, still an enjoyably film.

Let me preface this by saying I have never seen 50 Shades of Grey. I've seen the reviews, I know the story, but after seeing 50 Shades of Black I feel like I've seen the actual movie it was parodying. Wayans' comedies have devolved from clever self-aware satires to blatant movie rip-offs with sporadic laughs. The difference is, unlike the Haunted House movies, there are next to no laughs in 50 Shades of Black. It's essentially deconstructing every scene in 50 Shades of Grey to show the audience how dumb it is, which would be fine if it was actually funny. But no, this humor is scraped right from the bottom of the barrel, reusing the same stupid gags from previous spoofs and rehashed awkward shock "humor" that comes across more cringe-worthy than anything.

I like Marlon Wayans, I really do. He seems like an awesome guy and he was actually a great writer one point, and a great actor too (to this day I'm blown away by his performance in Requiem for a Dream), but his talents must have gone to his head because he isn't tapping into his genius anymore. It's just easy joke after easy joke, and as simple as the jokes are, none of them land. In fact, at one point after a painfully awkward dinner scene that went on 5 minutes too long, I couldn't help but laugh, for the wrong reasons mind you, thinking, "Jesus Christ, this is a real movie?" It was painful.

All of me wanted this movie to be good, but part of me knew it would be a disaster. Well, that part of me was right. Sure, I chuckled at a few scenes, but I also chuckled a few times in A Haunted House 2 and that's still a terrible movie. The difference is 50 Shades of Grey is even lazier and somehow even less clever than AHH2. I anxiously await the day the Wayans brothers come out with another great spoof movie, but I have a feeling it's going to be a long, long wait.

You would think with all the accumulated earnings the Wayans brothers, Shawn and Marlon, have obtained after being on Television and in films for years that they would invest their money and their time in projects that would be a bit more thoughtful and entertaining. Instead, ever since the runaway success of "A Haunted House" in 2013, the two, particularly Marlon, have been keen on making movies that fit the bill for the lowest common denominator of entertainment. "Fifty Shades of Black," a horribly obvious and persistently unfunny array of cheapshots at the erotic novel/film series that is already too easy to joke about, continues Marlon's streak and incredible failing to make something out of his Baby Way Productions company.

I've always found it interesting that while Tyler Perry's films are anything but consistent, and there are about an equal number of bad films in his catalog as good films, he often gets blamed for making films about black people that cater to the lowest common denominator and showcase them in a negative light, yet the recent collaborations of Marlon Wayans and Michael Tiddes go pretty much unscathed. These are films that evoke some of the most putrid and ugly stereotypes about nearly every race and, for that matter, exist simply as unapologetically crude and contrived projects that do nothing but attempt to evoke laughs based on brand-recognition. These films are just a slight notch above the dreaded works of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

As hinted, "Fifty Shades of Black" is a parody of "Fifty Shades of Grey," and it takes pretty much the safest, most convenient route to parody the film by making the jokes largely centered around the absurdity of BDSM and its culture, race and ethnic humor, the ordinariness and "ugliness" of its lead female character, and the enigma surrounding its titular character, who in this case, is Christian Black (Marlon Wayans). Christian is a multi-millionaire mogul who begins a sexual relationship with his new intern, Hannah Steale (Kali Hawk) and what entails is a relationship filled with sex, sexual violence, and downright bizarre encounters.

While whatever Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison gang is cooking up this year is likely to get plenty of Razzie nominations, Marlon Wayans and his cast of familiar faces such as Affion Crockett, Missi Pyle, Mike Epps, Fred Willard, and more should be looking at the same award. It's incredibly rare to see a cast ostensibly operate on auto-pilot and look like the end product bearing some essence of quality is the furthest thing from their minds, but perhaps given the lazy screen writing of Rick Alvarez and Wayans himself, this was to be expected.

Shockingly enough, "Fifty Shades of Black" offers more laughs than both of the "Haunted House" films put together, especially during a sequence that parodies one of last year's Best Picture contenders at the Academy Awards. However, in order to get to this sequence, one has to succumb to the drudgery of enough racial and bathroom humor - so much that it gives Laura Mulvey's concept of "phallocentrism" a whole different angle to explore - that it ultimately isn't worth sitting through the amount of trivial nonsense to get to that particular scene.

We're not even in February yet and this year has already been incredibly interesting for comedies. After seeing "Ride Along 2," I didn't think many more comedies of the year would get much worse than that. Then I saw "Dirty Grandpa" the following week and I thought the same thing; there was most likely the weakest comedy of 2016 that I would have to sit through. Now, almost exactly a week later, I've seen "Fifty Shades of Black," and if this isn't the worst comedy of 2016, I seriously fear what I have to endure in the coming eleven months.