'Fifty Shades' starts strong, then goes off the rails

This movie ends with two words:

"Anastasia."

"Christian."

Then came more words from the audience at a Wednesday night sneak preview of "Fifty Shades of Grey," and they were far more colorful, some even unprintable for a family newspaper.

The moment the screen faded to black, a wave of surly disbelief, even anger, washed over the crowd at Chicago's ICON Theater with a degree of mass disapproval I haven't witnessed since Tom Berenger stabbed Diane Keaton to death at the end of "Looking for Mr. Goodbar."

Oddly enough, Sam Taylor-Johnson's movie version of E.L. James' phenomenal sexy best-seller begins as an intriguing, exciting, even eroticizing experience before its S&M engine jumps the rails.

By now, everyone probably knows that "Fifty Shades" concerns a virginal college coed who falls for an older billionaire, Christian Grey, who is into major kinky stuff involving blindfolds, restraints, whips, ice cubes and riding crops.

A wonderfully cast Dakota Johnson plays the student, Anastasia "Ana" Steele, and she perfectly nails her character. Nervous, insecure and tentative, Johnson's Ana, a wide-eyed English-lit major, yearns for something more than her humdrum life as a hardware store employee.

When her ill roommate can't make a university newspaper interview with 27-year-old major magnate hunk Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan, channeling a young Malcolm McDowell), Ana steps in for her and stumbles through the worst interview in journalism education history. (But it's OK, because she's an English-lit major.)

We already know what's coming, and our knowledge informs their flirtatious exchanges, flushed with fun and foreshadowing.

"I enjoy various physical pursuits," Christian tells her, and Ana just sits there, biting her lower lip with lusty, sensual joy, emanating wave after wave of sheer OMG at how hot this guy looks.

Meanwhile, Christian cuts a well-dressed figure of cruel coolness tempered with a touch of torment.

"I'm not the man for you!" he later tells her. "Steer clear of me! I have to let you go!"

What's not for an impressionable virgin to endlessly obsess over?

Christian wants Ana to become a submissive to his dominant. That way she can experience "freedom" and "safety" as he once did for seven years as a submissive to his mother's best friend.

Yep, that Christian has a few issues to deal with, and we don't really find out what they are.

Still, "Fifty Shades" putters along on production designer David Wasco's eye-popping sets and a likable sense of self-aware humor, even while Christian lures Ana into his locked playroom filled with sex devices that look as if they once belonged to Torquemada.

Then, long before that lame harbinger of disappointment - the metaphorical thunderstorm - signals an end to the fun, "Fifty Shades" stops being a neutered R-rated version of a kinky sex novel (like "9½ Weeks") and starts to resemble Just Jaeckin's brutal bondage drama "The Story of O."

The tone drifts into deathly seriousness. The deft dialogue begins to dissolve and the characters who enthralled us suddenly seem just plain icky, especially in an inadvertently hilarious slow-motion S&M montage.

(Don't worry. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey frames the steamiest scenes so delicately that most viewers won't be turning 50 shades of red.)

"Fifty Shades" intends to be a feminist twist on a misogynist's fantasy, with lovable Ana, played by Johnson as an erotic volcano capable of erupting at any moment, turning the tables on Christian.

But the movie ends so abruptly cold (two sequels are in the planning stages) that not even Johnson's perfect pitch performance can make "Grey" matter.

“Fifty Shades of Grey”

★ ½

Starring: Jamie Dornan, Dakota Johnson, Jennifer Ehle, Luke Grimes, Marcia Gay Harden

Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Other: A Focus Features release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations. 110 minutes