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"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.

If you're not a Wayans film, don't watch this. If you are, you'll enjoy it. It's not their best, but is better than much of their most recent stuff. I found myself laughing out loud several times - though the 2nd half wasn't as good. I'm surprised at some of the reviews - appearing shocked at the content! Why would you watch a parody of a sado-masochistic movie if you're not expecting potty humor??

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.

I find it strange that Marlon Wayans found the need to parody what is already hands down the funnest movie of 2015. Does a bad movie, really need a parody? Seems redundant, but they did it.

50 shades of black has some decent jokes that poke fun at how outrageous 50 Shades of Grey is (although my favorite bit was one that parodied Whiplash with Florence Henderson playing a music teacher training young boys to use their "instruments"), but the laughs are not constant enough through the entire movie to justify the money spent.

It's good that Wanyans has no problem making light of himself, cause it's those skits that made for the most laugh out loud experience , but he also has no problem making a joke at someone else's expense. I probability would not care if the jokes were funny. There recent though, with a joke about the 2016 presidential campaign thrown in the mix.

It's packed with enough laughs to get something out of it, but the material used to make this was too weak itself for this movie to be all that good.