Fifty Shades of Black (2016)

In 2015, a movie came out that was both anticipated and groaned about.  It was called Fifty Shades of Grey.  It was a sex-filled story based on a Twilight fanfiction.  There were fans and detractors, each being as outspoken as the others.  Of course, that meant that there would be a major cultural impact.  Anything that has that kind of cultural impact manages to score itself spoofs and parodies.  This case was no different.

2016 saw the release of a Marlon Wayans headed spoof called Fifty Shades of Black.  It was the same sort of thing as A Haunted House, which came out when the Paranormal Activity movies were a huge presence.  I meant to watch Fifty Shades of Black in the theater and write about it.  Those plans fell through and I waited until the movie was on Netflix Canada to check it out.  This is that time.  I am about to begin the movie and start writing about it.

This post is going to be a little different.  I’ve done some like this before.  The one that comes to mind immediately is the post for Funky Forest.  Basically, I’m going to give a running commentary of my thoughts.  I’ll give some timecodes to say whereabouts in the runtime I am.  I’m not going to explain what the movie is.  I haven’t seen it, and I’ll be writing all about it as I watch it.  So let’s just get on with the movie.

Quick note: The commentary is unedited since it was in the moment thoughts.  I don’t want to tamper with that.  If there are spelling or grammar mistakes, woops.

Around 2:20 into the movie – I just saw a montage of the main character, Christian Black (Marlon Wayans) stealing stuff.  He stole a suit, stole a purse, and stole a car.  None of that was funny.  None of it.

Around 4:45 into the movie – The secretary at Christian Black’s place of business just bragged about playing with Black’s balls, to the point of breathing ball breath onto Hannah Steale (Kali Hawk).  That was disturbing.

Around 12:45 into the movie – Hannah just had a sexual experience in a hardware store by herself with a pencil.  Then a man got a boner and walked away.  This is the type of humour in this movie.  This is going to be a long watch.  I can tell.

Around 17:00 into the movie – The first good joke, a joke about Nicholas Sparks movies.  That’s one laugh that this movie has gotten from me.

Around 20:20 into the movie – A WorldstarHipHop joke.  I’m not sure whether I love it or hate it.

Around 29:00 into the movie – Christian decided to show Hannah his play room.  He made the key have sex with the lock, which was kind of weird.  Then he opened the door and it was a bunch of dudes playing XBOX.

Around 30:00 into the movie – Oh, there’s the real playroom.  All of the kinky stuff that’s expected of a Fifty Shades movie is there.  The fake out with the XBOX dudes was kind of strange though.

Around 33:00 into the movie – The second time I laughed during Fifty Shades of Black was when there was a montage of people being brought into the kink room.  The different reactions were actually pretty good, and Marlon Wayans did a good job with his reactions.  He hasn’t been great so far, but that little bit was a highlight.

Around 43:25 into the movie – Christian had sex at 16 with his music teacher.  This is supposed to be a hilarious scene but ends up being highly disturbing.

Around 56:30 into the movie – There are a lot of references to smells in this movie.  I’m actually a little worried about what this would have been like in one of those 5-D movies where they add smells and water effects.  That would have been a crazy ride.

Around 1:05:30 into the movie – I honestly don’t know what to write about this movie.  It’s dumb, but it’s not so dumb that it’s ridiculously bad.  It feels like a comedic take on Fifty Shades of Grey, without actually being funny.  There were just a bunch of guys trying to break open some locks because Hannah was chained to a ceiling and Christian lost the key.  It wasn’t funny.  I have nothing interesting to say about it.  It just happened.

Around 1:08:10 into the movie – There was a strange Magic Mike scene that I’m not sure had anything to do with anything.  I actually don’t remember it even being set up.  It just started and ended and that was it.

Around 1:13:20 into the movie – A whole scene just dropped a bunch of Cuba Gooding Jr. movie quotes, including a line from Snow Dogs.  Yes, Snow Dogs.  I, for whatever reason, love that they dropped that quote.

Around 1:20:45 into the movie – There we go.  There’s a good dig at Fifty Shades of Grey.  Mentioning that Dakota Johnson didn’t need to be naked the whole time while going through a spoof where the female lead wasn’t naked the whole time.  That’s actually a good joke about the movie.  Nice work.

Around 1:26:00 into the movie – Everything ended happily.  That’s kind of weird.  The way that things were going, it felt like a cheat to have the story make a u-turn so that the characters could be together in the end.  I’m not sure why it ended like that.

And so it ends.  Fifty Shades of Black is over.  I have a few thoughts about the movie before getting out of here.  The thoughts are about the whole, rather than the individual thoughts I gave while watching.  Maybe these can bring everything together and give you a better idea of what you’re going to get if you watch it.

Having watched this about a week ago at the time of writing this part, I’ve talked to a few people about the movie.  They always ask “Why would you watch that?”  My response is simple. “Why not?”  I’m willing to give any movie a shot because 99% of the time there is something to learn.  Good movie, bad movie, they both teach you what to do and what not to do when telling a story in a visual form.  The thing about Fifty Shades of Black is that it falls somewhere in between.  Many of the jokes fall flat, but the movie attempted something that most modern spoofs don’t.  It tried to bring comedy to a movie rather than fill it with references.  Though it may have failed most of the time, at least it tried.  It wasn’t hitting the lowest level of comedy, recognition.  Yes, the basis of the movie was a recognizable story.  But it put the jokes within that, rather than trying to fit the story to the jokes.  It made light of the original concept.  It wasn’t just a collection of references to anything popular.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Fifty Shades of Black.  There is something to it, though, that I could appreciate more on subsequent viewings.  Something about it speaks to me.  It’s easily watchable, even with the flat jokes.  Maybe it was the effort they put in to try actual jokes.  Maybe my disconnect is only because it was targeted at black people and I’m white.  No matter what it is, I respect Fifty Shades of Black.  It’s not something I love and might not be something that most people will love, but I have respect for what it was.  If I end up watching it again, I’m sure I’ll find more to like.

Here are some notes that you might like:

• I mentioned Funky Forest and A Haunted House in this post.
• Fifty Shades of Black was directed by Michael Tiddes, who also directed A Haunted House.
• Marlon Wayans, Affion Crockett, and Dave Sheridan were all in Fifty Shades of Black and A Haunted House.
• Russell Peters made an appearance in Fifty Shades of Black.  He was also in New Year’s Eve.
• Do you remember Johnny Meyer from Bermuda Tentacles?  He came back to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Fifty Shades of Black.
• The mother of Christian Black was played by Jane Seymour.  She voiced a character in Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever.
• Finally, Fred Willard showed up as Christian Black’s father.  He was in Date Movie.
• Have you seen Fifty Shades of Black?  What did you think of it?  You can discuss the movie in the comments below.
• The comments are also a good place to suggest movies for me to watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments.  You can also find me on Twitter and let me know the suggestions there.
• Snapchat is another place to find me.  If you want to see clips of the bad movies I watch, add me there.  I have the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week is one of the big series weeks here at the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  It’s the first one in about twenty weeks since the four year anniversary rewatch derailed the last one.  To make up for that loss, I subjected myself to three Uwe Boll movies.  I watched the In the Name of the King franchise and you’re going to get my thoughts on it when you come back for the next post.  See you in a week.