Usually I’d start a review with a little bit of context, but there is absolutely no need to explain what Fifty Shades of Grey is. You all know. And anyone who read our review for the film adaptation will know that here at CeX we’re not exactly fans. When Fifty Shades of Black was announced, I can’t say I was excited – now that I’m a cynical and miserable writer, I find the Wayans style of humour to be exhausting and juvenile. But hey, I figured I could happily sit and watch anyone rip into Fifty Shades. It deserves all the piss-taking it can get. I was wrong. This film was one of the most painfully shit attempts at comedy I have seen in years.
Out now on DVD, Fifty Shades of Black is just a straight-up spoof of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie of 2015. First of all, I had no idea these spoof films were still being made. Thinking about films like Scary Movie, Epic Movie and Date Movie take me back to a time when I found this kind of humour funny, but I can’t even watch the trailers for them now without cringing and hating my young self for enjoying them. Still, I assumed the style of film was very much of its time – and learning this kind of thing is still being made, and often with the same casts, is a strange thought. Their audiences have grown up but they haven’t. Fifty Shades of Black barely even had a theatrical release here in the UK – presumably due to lack of demand - and was recently quietly dropped on to DVD. I hope its lack of demand, anyway. It pains me to know there are still people out there who enjoy this shit.
Of course, narratively Fifty Shades of Black follows the same premise as Grey. A young college student Hannah Steale (Kali Hawk) interviews a wealthy entrepreneur Christian Black (Marlon Wayans), and a sexual spark alights between the two. They embark on an erotic journey, yada yada yada. But of course in Fifty Shades of Black, there’s less romance (that is if you consider Fifty Shades of Grey to be a romance, don’t get me started…) and more dick jokes. Marlon Wayans pitched the film as ‘imagine if Christian Grey was black’. That is literally the entire premise for this film. It’s an hour and a half of ‘imagine if Christian Grey was black’. It’s a one-joke film and that joke isn’t even funny in the first place…At best, Fifty Shades of Black should’ve been a sketch. Just 5 minutes, on SNL or Key & Peele. NOT AN ENTIRE FILM. It’s one joke! You can’t turn a knock-knock joke into a movie! So how can you turn ‘imagine if Christian Grey was black’ into a movie?! And more importantly, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO US?! WHAT DID WE DO TO DESERVE THIS, MARLON WAYANS?!
So where do I begin? How do I tell you just how bad this is? Fifty Shades of Black is up there with the worst spoof movies I’ve ever had the misfortune of having to endure. Each ‘joke’ in the film is as painfully unfunny as Marlon Wayans coming into your house and bashing you over the head with a 4x4 piece of wood. It is offensively bad. It’s a comedy with only one job – to be funny. And it fucks it up so badly that you’ll be wishing you could be watching Fifty Shades of Grey instead. It’s everything wrong with modern comedy. It’s an outrage. A disgrace. It’s just despicable. It’s the sort of experience that makes you yearn for the sweet relief of death. Anything to make it stop.
I haven’t stopped showering since I watched this and I still can’t wash away the regret, shame and sadness that this whole experience has brought me. Marlon Wayans has created another monster in the form of this film that somebody needs to completely erase from cinema history. Every copy needs to be tracked down and destroyed. I don’t want to live in a world where Fifty Shades of Black exists on our shelves and in our homes. We are not safe. It’s tainting our oxygen and it’s only a matter of time before it infects our water supply too. It is a threat to all life. If it were to become a sentient being, we would all be f*cked.
I think I have made my point. Fifty Shades of Black isn’t a good film. -50/5
☆☆☆☆☆
Sam Love
Fifty Shades of Black at CeX
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