Obiter Dicta Issue 13 - March 23, 2015 | Page 17

ARTS & CULTURE Monday, March 23, 2015   17 A Trio of Film Reviews, Currently in Theatres Vampires, melodrama, and bad erotica: something for everyone? kendall grant › staff writer Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) 1/4 Tepid, timid, turgid, tedious, and tame, if barely staying off the track of terrible, Fifty Shades of Grey is a monochromatic misfire, a syrupy softcore melodrama, a Harlequin Romance with pulleys. Chaste and clumsy, drab and dull, silly and sanctimonious, limp and ludicrous, it’s a Twilight ripoff that’s almost inferior to its already inferior inspiration. Anastasia “Ana” Steele is a twenty-one-year-old English literature undergraduate at Washington State University’s satellite campus near Vancouver. When her roommate, Kate Kavanagh, becomes ill and is unable to interview wealthy twenty-seven-yearold publishing mogul Christian Grey at his company headquarters in Seattle for the college newspaper, Ana agrees to go in her plac K