Fifty Shades of Black Review

     The parody genre might be the laziest and least inspiring movies out there. While it can occasionally lead to very funny movies like "Airplane!," "Spaceballs," or "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," more often than not they end up being some of the worst movies you'll ever see. But the reason that Hollywood keeps churning these out is because they are cheap to make, but are often successful. The last decent spoof movie I can think of would be "Scary Movie 3" back in 2003, it wasn't good but it made me laugh; but in recent years though it's like the people behind these movies aren't even trying anymore. I took a look at my lists of the five worst movies of 2013, 2014, and 2015 and realized that five of the 15 were parody movies. And arguably the worst of all of them would have to be 2014 abysmal "A Haunted House 2." A truly unfunny and thoroughly unenjoyable abomination of a movie; brought to us by its writer, producer, and star, Marlon Wayans. Most well known for his role in "White Chicks" (which is one of my least favorite movies ever made), Wayans has made a career out of truly terrible movies. He is even considered by many to be one of the worst actors of all time. So what has Wayans decided his latest project would be? A parody of one of the worst movies of 2015, "Fifty Shades of Grey." Which brings us to my review of one of the worst movies you’ll see in 2016, “Fifty Shades of Black.” 

     Hannah is a college student who is recruited by her roommate to go interview successful businessman Christian Black in her place when her Chlamydia is acting up. Hannah meets Christian, who made his money selling drugs, and is intrigued. While working at her job Christian starts to stalk her and gives her his number. After getting drunk with some friends (one of which tries to drug and rape her), she end up at Christian's who is even weirder than she thought. So basically the story is the exact same as "Fifty Shades of Grey" plus raunchy comedy and overall stupidity; so I'm going to stop summarizing it. 

     When you're looking to make a parody or spoof movie, a good starting point would be to not have revolve around one of the worst movies of the previous year. Because like the movie it mocks, "Fifty Shades of Black" is not good. First off, it's not funny. At no point in this movie was I actually laughing, there were a few moments where I would I'd smirk or chuckle, but overall this was one of those comedies that have the amazing ability to not be funny. The problem was that this movie felt lazy, it always went after low hanging fruit and cheap shots. It also followed "Fifty Shades of Grey basically scene for scene. There was no surprise, everything that you thought was going to happen before hand ended up happening. It actually managed to be pretty damn boring the entire time. It relied almost entirely on crude humor, as well as sex jokes and jokes about race (with a mostly black cast, a lot of jokes were about them being black). It wasn't clever, it wasn't funny, and it felt like lowest common denominator humor throughout the entire run time. Not only was it not funny, it was terribly written. Not original in any sense of the word, it was filled with out of date and unnecessary references that made the whole thing feel stale. Couple that with sub-par acting from the entire cast (Marlon Wayans at least tried to add some personality to his character), and you have a movie that will undoubtedly be on my list of the worst movies of the year. The best part of this movie was that they openly mock "Fifty Shades of Grey;" not just by referencing it, but by actually showing the book on camera and calling it terrible. Is "Fifty Shades of Black" the worst movie I have ever seen? No. Is it the best? Far from it. This movie is nothing more than a perfectly forgettable cash grab. This movie could have actually been funny if they tried, but instead they decided it would be easier to half-ass it. So if I'm lucky, I'll never have watch this movie again. 

Pros: A few chuckles, openly mocks "Fifty Shades of Grey." 

Cons: Sub-par acting from everyone, terrible writing, feels lazy, follows story scene for scene, not funny, out of date/unnecessary references, completely unmemorable, almost entirely crude humor and sex/race jokes.

1/5 Stars