MovieChat Forums > Fifty Shades of Black (2016) Discussion > Here's my FULL review! SPOILERS!

Here's my FULL review! SPOILERS!


Well what can I say? I walked in with low expectations and tried, really tried to enjoy the movie, but I just couldn't. This movie did at least try to be scene-by-scene with Fifty Shades of Grey but it doesn't matter, because the comedy bits are too fast, too forced and above all too dumb! The movie opens up similarly to FSOG with the sky and city backdrop with a slow R&B ballad but then we cut to man running, whom of which is obviously Marlon Wayans, and as he runs past an old lady with her purse hanging out, what does he do as he passes her? Then we see him trying on a suit, what do you think he does next? And finally we see him posing as a valet and gets into a sports car, what do you think he does to it? I have purposefully left out the answer because it's SO *beep* OBVIOUS WHAT HE WILL DO! Not only do you know he's going to steal these things (which is dumb because his character is rich and powerful to begin with) because they make it SO OBVIOUS but they actually think people expect to laugh at it after they have done the SAME JOKE THREE TIMES IN A ROW! This is all only in the first 83 seconds of the film, oh and I am done warming up, now it's time for me to continue! We then meet the obvious female lead, Hannah, who is as dull as Dakota Johnson was in FSOG and her stereotypical, over-the-top, wannabe low-class urban-gansta-fat-bitch room mate, complete with over-the-top colored hair, tacky nails and sassy attitude to boot. It seems like the Wayans love a stereotypical side-chick in all of their spoof movies. First there was Brenda in the Scary Movies, then there was Charity in Dance Flick and now we have Kateesha, played by new-comer Jenny Zigrino and let me tell you, she is ANNOYING! Nothing this bitch says is remotely funny and the audience I saw this with can contest to that! All nine of them could! The movie then continues with Hannah going to Christian Blacks office and upon approaching the door to go in, rather than pulling on the handles, she instead continuously runs, jumps, kicks and even slams into the door to open until (as obviously predicted) Christian opens the door and runs into something and he reacts with a sarcastic remark. At this point, I had reached my wits end but being a true critic, I stayed ( I should've left, honestly I should've left because I was six minutes in and had eighty-six miserable minutes left ). We then have line delivered from Christian saying " I got my money the way most black entrepreneurs got theirs- " Hannah replies " Real estate? " he then replies " Drug dealing ". WOW, a racial stereotype said by a black man but if a white guy said that, all hell would break loose, but if he says it, it's ok? Not really, no............anyway, after Hannah leaves and says goodbye, the elevator doors close on her face. Not once, not twice, not even three times, but six times! Honestly, is this supposed to be funny? Because it wasn't and the audience I saw this with can contest to that! All nine of them! After Christian pushes Hannah back, head-first, he then says " White girls, fix that elevator! " Ok let me stop here and say something about this. First of all, why would the elevator need to be fixed? Obviously she was too stupid and just stood there until he pushed her back into it. Second of all, and most importantly, it was probably just a setup to force a lame joke to force a racist joke. I can guarantee you if this flipped and a white guy said " Black girls, fix that elevator! " There would be black people protesting the premiere of the movie. Now let's let the record stand, I am not a racist but I do tell it like it is and I call it like I see it and I don't hold back my opinion. We have freedom of speech in this country but not freedom of repercussions, and I understand that, but I only ask that you guys understand the double-standards presented here in this film. Oh by the way, no one laughed at that joke either, just saying, and out of the nine people in the audience, seven of them were black and the other two were white. Any way, as we see Hannah working in the hardware store she licks and felates a pencil and then Christian stops by and licks a bag of zipties and says he’s not serial killer but happens to know all the items to cover-up a murder and decides to buy those items. Is this supposed to be funny? We then find out Christian has a brother named Eli who is a parody of the singer The Weeknd but he calls himself The Weekday. He is introduced to Kateesha and they become involved with each other and he has an abnormally long penis that falls into a cereal bowl and even knocks over candles. So funny, isn’t it? The morning after Christian and Hannah make love, he gives her a piece of toast but continuously licks the jam and sucks on the bread and then attempts to give it to her. This is no funnier than me explaining that to you. We now get to meet Christian’s mother, played by the still gorgeous Jane Seymor. Her character is racist and still insists on checking to see if her wallet is stolen by her black son. This is just abysmal. It angers me as a Caucasion because most of us don’t think like that! The media has portrayed us as being afraid of black people for so long but this joke is so tired and so out-of-date it’s not even relevant anymore! This is 2016 NOT 1956! We then see Christian trying to spank Hannah but it doesn’t hurt her because of her fake butt implants and he even breaks a stool over her ass. Ok, are we supposed to laugh at successive items to get a reaction out of someone? Because if so, they failed. And I got nine people to contest to that! Afterwards Hannah gets introduced to Christian’s play-room but not before he makes an attempt at jamming the key back-and-fourth into the door latch for a lousy sex-related joke. We then get introduced to his play room which is literally what it is: a play room, with a big TV, XBOX One and a bunch of lazy-good-for-nothing friends of his. After this lame cute-away joke, we then get to his real play-room which has whips than range in intensity as follows: Roots, Glory, Amistad, Django Unchained, 12 Years a Slave and finally Joe Jackson. Ok, this is just sad. First of all, I am sure more than half of the target audience doesn’t know what Roots, Glory or Amistad is and probably never even saw 12 Years a Slave or are familiar with Joe Jackson. During the torture session Christian reads from the book Fifty Shades of Grey and complains saying did a “ Third grader write this? “ I may never know because I haven’t read it but I guarantee you a retarded 2nd grader in a foster home with nothing to eat but Ensure meal replacement drinks gave the idea to a remedial 12-year-old to give to Marlon the inspiration to write the script to this film. So after the torture session Hannah gets her hands locked in shackles and cannot get free because Christian is too much of a dumb ass to remember where the key is and so we have a long drawn out sequence of people trying to un-shackle her from a welder to a magician which was played by Dave Sheridan whom of which was in previous Wayans films like Little Man and, most famously, as Officer Doofy in Scary Movie. Later that day we meet Hannah’s father, played by the actually funny Mike Epps. He makes a few jokes about how ugly Hannah is how her mother must have been a whore. This is not funny and it is such lousy delivery from such a funny guy. Hannah then gets a new car from Christian that he bought (stole) and then says to take her somewhere special and will take her for the ride of her life and she excitedly thinks it’s going to be his helicopter but instead it’s a bus ride, even though he has a fancy sports car and he’s rich, but ok! We then cut to a flashback of Christian trying to have sex with his music teacher played by Florence Henderson. I bet some of you have to Google who she is first, because again, this actress will be almost unknown to the target audience, but I’ll give it to you thumbnail, she was Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch. If you don’t know what The Brady Bunch was, it’s your fault because you were expected to know who the actress was in this flashback to make it funny! During the spoof, they’re having sex and it parodies The Graduate and the recent drama Whiplash. Again, two movies I doubt the target has seen, considering the immature level of imbalanced jokes on display in this film to match back to the level of quality of those that are spoofed. We now meet Christian’s family for a dinner gathering and his father, played by the usually funny Fred Willard (but of course, not in this film) and his Korean sister Mai. During the dinner Christian’s racist mother says they’re having food representing where each of their children hail from: Since Mai is Korean (only to be stereotypically and intentionally mistaken for Chinese) she is having Peking Duck and since Christian is African-American, he is having a bucket (yes, a bucket) of fried chicken and a large pitcher of red Kool-Aid. Seriously? SERIOUSLY!?!?!?!?!??? How could anyone find this funny? What are the intended ages here? Dead to one? After this dinner scene Christian and Hannah go dancing and she asks where he got his dance moves from and says “ Tampa “ and now we get a spoof of Magic Mike. Now I will admit that Marlon is in good shape and has continued to improve and tone his physique over the years considering he is in his 40’s, but the stuff he does here is enough to make you not only sick but question how was this supposed to be funny? The first thing he does is rip of his white tank-top and proceeds to rub back-and-forth between his clothed ass. He then throws his shirt at a woman in the audience. You’ll never guess what happened to the *beep* I mean shirt! The amount of smeared *beep* on this tank-top is too much in mass considering the size his body and the fact that we later see him wearing a (clean) red thong so not only is the joke too nasty, but inconsistent as well. He then does a backflip off the stage after (an obvious double) shaking his ass and you guessed it! Breaks through a comically large wooden table then gets face-sat by, you guessed it! An obese woman! You know, I still don’t know it took two writers to make this film, nor do I know why the new and growing company Open Road gave Marlon and the director Michael Tiddes the $5.5 Million dollar budget to do this disaster. After Christian and Hannah have sex, he stacks Jenga blocks on her stomach and after she wakes up she wants to talk to him but he says that’s something only “ White people do and Black people just argue first then talk “ and then we got more stereotypical arguing from them and it ends with him saying “ Don’t let me to clapping boo! See? This is how WE communicate “ . Ok, before I continue on, yes I am not finished with this review yet, this is one stereotype I wish would just die. Not all black people talk like that. It’s seriously worse than thinking that white people don’t season chicken (ever hear of Colonel Sanders?) or eat macaroni & cheese and hot dogs for dinner. I say this seriously because so many people today now more than ever, take serious advice and trends from media and celebrities. Women wore their hair like Jackie Kennedy in the 60’s and women wore their hair like Jennifer Aniston in 90’s because they were influenced by this style and a lot of today’s youth say YOLO because of that ugly-unibrowed-no-talented-scar headed-beady eyed-lazy talking-wannabe-rapper Drake said it. These are only a few examples of how media influences people and when the mouth-breathers who watch movies like this, they begin to imitate what they saw and thus Idiocracy continues. So after they argue, Hannah decides to leave but not before the elevator doors close in again (surprise) on her face and then Christian apologizes and says he will take her on a wonderful journey then instead of her thinking it will be a jet, it’s a cramped airplane complete with every stereotype of air travel you can think of, from noisy kids to a man vomiting and missing the barf bag, Christian laughs at Hannah’s stupid fantasy and the film (thankfully) comes to a close. I will say in closing, I’m sure Marlon Wayans is a nice guy in real life, I’m sure the cast had fun making this film but I must say, we deserve better comedy than this. Some spoof movies are actually funny and stand the test of time like the 1980 comedy Airplane! or the 1987 comedy Spaceballs, 1988’s I’m Gonna Get You Sucka!, 1996’s Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood or even the first and second Scary Movie in 2000 and 2001. A lot of those mid-western slapstick comedies that the Zuckers did failed but few succeeded. For every Wrongfully Accused, Mafia!, Top Secret! or Superhero Movie we do at least have Hot Shots and Airplane! and The Kentucky Fried Movie but at least they got the picture and stopped after making the abysmal An American Carol in 2008. Keenan-Ivory, Kim , Damon and Shawn Wayans at least knew their style was wearing thin and still did things but because they didn’t make anything new or original. Damon Wayans Jr. was in Dance Flick and that movie bombed but he at least made up for it with The Other Guys and Let’s Be Cops. Marlon was also in Dance Flick but was terrible in that as he was in Dungeons & Dragons, The Ladykillers, Norbit, Little Man, G.I. Joe and A Haunted House 1 & 2. I know he is more capable of making something better than this and I am glad the movie flopped and maybe he will take more time to make a better film but who knows, I bet he will make a sequel and call it “ Fifty Shades Blacker “ . I gotta tell you guys watching this movie was nothing short of agonizing. I would rather have been back in the hospital for another Transesophageal Echocardiogram with an IV in my arm and nothing to eat all day than to sit this again for just five minutes. This movie has easily earned not only the title of worst movie of 2016, but it is in my top 10 worst movies of all time!

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Great review. What is sad to me is Marlon is actually a great actor. If anyone saw Requiem For a Dream, then you know the guy can act. It sounds like he is just collecting a paycheck.

To be honest, I think just reading your review is going to be funnier that seeing the movie. So thanks for that!

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You're quite welcome! He IS a talented and even funny actor! I enjoyed him in The Sixth Man, Senseless and even White Chicks. It seems like once he was in Littleman it all went downhill. The same thing effect happened when Adam Sandler did You Don't Mess With The Zohan.

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I admit I only made it as far as "jokes are too dumb" maybe I should have read your whole long-*ss rant. The movie it parodied was dumb as are you. Maybe you missed the long string of movie references and black characters getting flogged in movies references, or maybe the greatest moment in any movie lately, when the hero tells the college grads to give up because of Global Warming -- which is true and funny at the same time! Or maybe you missed the brick that could have been owned by any "black christian" or that he is a Republican, or that his mom is white and tasers his girlfriend because she does not appreciate that "Black lives matter"?
I thought the movie was hilarious and very bright, smart and timely.

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You should've read my entire review (rant) first but if you liked the movie and thought it was smart, more power to you! I'm glad you enjoyed it, really I am. Thanks for the reply!

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Nice reply! I felt bad, so I read more of your review, maybe 3/4 but still could not make it all the way. May I gently suggest rewrite/editing? Your review is longer than the movie! And you repeat yourself, something you complained about in the film!

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