'50 Shades of Grey' Movie News: Preview Released, Early Reviews Say Film Seems Far More PG Than Expected
- Selena Hill
- Mar 26, 2014 05:19 PM EDT
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While the rest of the world will have to continue to wait to see the debut and official trailer of the movie adaption of "Fifty Shades of Grey," a select few have already seen an exclusive five-minute preview of the highly anticipated erotic film.
Universal Pictures presented never-before-seen footage from the steamy S&M flick after the annual State of the Industry event at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
"Nobody outside the studio has seen a frame of footage," announced Universal Pictures chairman Donna Langley at the event, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The clip showed different scenes of co-stars Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele and Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey together in Grey's office, at coffee shops and Anastasia's job.
It also became apparent that although the movie is based on E.L. James' raunchy best-selling novel, the film centers more on the romance between the two leads rather than their erotic sex lives. The focus of the preview was the couple's courting, except for a brief glimpse of Johnson wearing a black blindfold in a red room in the preview, reports E! News.
"Rather then [sic] fill the five-minute teaser with the sex that made the books by British author E.L James so popular, the studio went against expectations and highlighted the romance between the two leads," Entertainment Weekly's Nicole Sperling writes. "But with the exception of a brief blindfold, a hand on a thigh and a glimpse of a riding crop, Mr. Grey's penchant for domineering sex was kept to a minimum."
Despite speculation that a version of the film might be rated NC-17, CinemaBlend's Eric Eisenberg said the initial preview is far more PG.
"While the movie promises to be filled with all kinds of taboo carnal relations, what was shown in the clips was very PG-rated (they didn't even mention the word "sex.")," wrote Eisenberg. "Of course, there was plenty of innuendo and suggestion of Christian Grey's habits behind locked doors, but none of it was explicitly shown. The closest it came to showing anything even remotely R-rated was Ana tied to a bed with a blindfold on, but even that shot lasted only about half a second."
HitFix's Gregory Ellwood noted that the leading characters have great onscreen chemistry.
"As for the actors, Johnson appears to play Anastasia's wide eyed perspective appropriately and certainly looks good with a reddish brown dyed hair. Jamie Doran is handsome and has that debonair thing down, but...whether the two of them have genuine chemistry remains to be seen," he said.
According to Variety's Alexandra Cheney, "Universal played it safe" by showing a sneak peek that "looked like a love story."
However, Amy Kaufman of the LA Times said, "It's of course possible some of that footage was of the toned-down sort, thanks to the CinemaCon crowd, which can be a more buttoned-up group. Still, that only underscores the balance Universal must strike in selling this film to a large mainstream audience, some portions of which may have appreciated the explicitness in the privacy of their own home more than they will in the communal setting of a movie theater."
"Fifty Shades of Grey" hits theaters on Feb. 13, 2015.
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