The response to this past weekend’s release of Fifty Shades of Grey has been, quite appropriately, equal parts pleasure and pain.
As expected, the BDSM romantic thriller (it’s always exciting to type a grouping of words for the first time) was a box-office sensation, with moviegoers titillated enough by the big-screen translation of E.L. James’s mommy porn phenomenon to ejaculate 94.4 million of their hard-earned dollars to see it—an all-time record for a February opening. Similarly expected, however, was the critical lashing the film received. And not with those fancy leather riding crops, either: the film earned a paltry 25 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Given the good news/bad news situation the film is in—a whole lot of people saw it, and those people thought it was terrible—what are we supposed to make of its impact on the careers of its two fresh-faced stars? In the case of Dakota Johnson, the relatively unknown daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson who we’ve now all seen chained, flogged, and screwed to the tune of a Beyoncé remix, the film could do what it most likely won’t for her brooding co-lead, Jamie Dornan: turn her into a megastar.
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This isn’t as obvious as you may think.
To begin with, the role Johnson is playing in 50 Shades—coquettish-mouse-turned-ravenous-sex-lioness Anastasia Steele—is horseshit.
As penned by E.L. James, Ana is infuriating. She’s a pathetic, illogical Pollyanna lacking nary a semblance of self-respect or sense of empowerment, yet is masqueraded by James and the 50 Shades phenomenon as some sort of feminist sex hero. No action she takes or decision she makes in the book or the movie makes any sense whatsoever. She is confusing, unsympathetic, and sad.
Anastasia Steele is not the role stars are born from.
And yet, one lip-bite at a time, Johnson manages to strip Ana bare—physically and literally—of all that insufferable artifice and make her something hereto thought implausible: a fully realized human. Johnson’s Ana is fun. She’s a firecracker. She shades Ana, previously a blank slate, with emotion, creating an actual captivating character arc where there was none.
Holy cow, is 50 Shades of Grey a terrible movie.
It is flawed in so many ways. It is self-serious, drab, unsexy, directed at the wrong audience, and, worst of all, not porn. Jamie Dornan, who is supposed to be a brooding and domineering sex siren that the film would ostensibly objectify incessantly and gloriously as Christian Grey, is sedated and sexless and barely even shows us his butt. But if this turd turkey of a film has a saving grace, it’s Dakota Johnson. Dakota Johnson is so very, very good in this movie.
She finds a surprising amount of humor in Ana. In fact, in another less perverse world, her take on Ana could actually front a legit romantic comedy. The eye-roll bemusement with which she reacts to each of Christian Grey’s random, crude come-ons mirrors the audience’s. It’s a more nuanced version of a “can’t believe I’m in this crap” attitude that, when taken too far, can come off as snooty and diva-ish. Instead, Johnson infuses the movie with a silliness and tongue-in-cheek perspective that the rest of the film could’ve used a heavier dose of.
She is far better than the material she’s given, turning the misfire that is Fifty Shades of Grey, which should’ve been a showcase for raunchy sex and a haven for moviegoers seeking a guilty pleasure, instead into a showcase for herself. In fact, her performance is the ultimate “eyes up here” directive. Though she’s more naked than the day she was born in 70 percent of the movie, the quality of her work distracts from the bare titillation. Screw the boobs. It’s her acting you’re paying attention to.
Starring in a movie like Fifty Shades of Grey could either be the best or the worst thing to happen to an actor’s career. That roll of the dice certainly explains why so many of the public’s first choices for the leads—Emma Watson, Robert Pattinson, Alexis Bledel—wanted nothing to do with the film. It explains why even after signing on, Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam bowed out of the production faster than an embarrassing one-night stand.
While the swooning over the so-called swashbuckling smolder of Christian Grey, as written in James’s series, was supposed to catapult the career of whatever star signed on—and bared all—to play the role in the film, there’s been deafening bad buzz for Dornan’s milquetoast performance and lack of gameness and enthusiasm in the film’s press tour. Instead, it’s Johnson—whose initial casting was met with little fanfare, who is playing the less interesting part, and who is demeaned repeatedly (and surprisingly) by the film’s female director—who is poised to benefit the most from starring in 50 Shades.
You see, cinematic history hasn’t been kind to actresses portraying the transformation from naïve to sexpot. It practically ruined Elizabeth Berkley’s career after she did it in Showgirls. Playing a stripper in I Know Who Killed Me wasn’t exactly a boon for Lindsay Lohan either. This could have been the most humiliating, rejecting moment in Dakota Johnson’s career. But she’s so damned charming in it, it will actually be the best.
When Johnson was first booked to do 50 Shades, most people accredited her blink-and-miss-it role in The Social Network as the thing that put her on the radar. Sure, it’s easy to draw a direct line from playing Justin Timberlake’s one-night stand to playing a fledgling BDSM enthusiast. But the more applicable indication of Johnson’s future Anastasia Steele potential can be seen in her work as a hapless single mom on the adorable short-lived Fox sitcom Ben and Kate.
The parallels between a family-friendly sitcom that was canceled after one season and a film about sexomachist escapades based on the most-read book in recent memory aren’t exactly obvious, but Johnson’s Ana owes a lot to her Kate. Like Ana, Kate was nervously entering a world that was unfamiliar and that both excited and scared her. In this case, that just happened to be starting to date again as a single mom. Not exactly BDSM, sure, but the way Johnson telegraphed Kate’s trepidations with screwball charm and effortless relatability is exactly the same skill set she employed to make Ana so easy to like, against all odds.
She’s played the consummate Girl Next Door on Ben and Kate and now she’s played the fantasy Girl Next Door, too. (I’m not too hip to such things, but isn’t the Girl Next Door fantasy, after all, that you see her naked all the time and she’s into really kinky sex?) That’s not a shabby combination for a girl trying to prove her range as she launches her film career.
Already coming up, Johnson has a part in Scott Cooper’s Whitey Bulger drama Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch. The quirky approachability she showed off in 50 Shades—far more in line with Reese Witherspoon than Dita Von Teese—will have its chance to shine when she stars with Leslie Mann and Allison Brie in the rom-com How to Be Single, from a writer of Sex and the City and He’s Just Not That Into You, no less.
As was revealed during her cameo in Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary special, she’ll also be hosting the venerable late-night sketch show later this month, the consummate sink or swim test of an actor’s talents and willingness to embrace the unusual acting challenges. (As star of Fifty Shades of Grey, perhaps she’s already proved a reckless abandon with the latter point.)
Furthermore, when not encumbered on the disastrous 50 Shades press tour by her wet blanket drip of a co-star who refuses to acknowledge that the only way to get through a publicity blitz for a movie about BDSM based a book labeled “mommy porn” is to just have fun with it, Johnson has been an absolute delight on the talk show circuit. Finally freed from Christian Grey’s shackles, in this case Jamie Dornan’s buzz-killing, Johnson’s been granted express entry into the hallowed and ever-important These Girls Seem Fun! club of Hollywood starlets, taking her rightful place alongside the likes of Jennifer Lawrence, Anna Kendrick, and Mindy Kaling.
That BFF likability, R-rated mature appeal, and down-to-earth allure is an irresistible Hollywood combination. You’ve already seen all of Dakota Johnson. Now get ready to see more of her.
