E.L. James' erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," which has been described as housewife porn, is now a movie, and it arrived just before Valentine's Day weekend. Film critic Neil Rosen filed this review.

"It's important for you to know that you can leave at any time.”

Now that is good advice to keep in mind, especially if you're one of the unfortunate souls who gets dragged to this film by your partner or date. For those unacquainted to the plot, it is about Anastasia, a virginal, naive college student being pursued by Christian Grey, a hunky millionaire corporate titan who has a thing for sadomasochist sex.

The bulk of the storyline revolves around Christian's attempts to get Anastasia to sign a written contract. That document will give him permission to do all kinds of kinky dominant activities with his new submissive slave.

The book was trashy, but the movie tries to elevate that content to high art, and is so vanilla that the results are a disaster.

The filmmakers have watered down both the tone and racy sexual content of the source material to such a large degree that people attracted to the sexual aspect of the novel will be sorely disappointed.

Romance fans are also out of luck as the characters are undeveloped and cartoonish. So is the story line, and the two main actors have little chemistry. We care nothing about their fate.

"It must be really boring."

It is! The whole thing comes off like a Harlequin romance meeting, a modified version one of those late-night Skinemax movies.

Dakota Johnson, the real life daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, has a certain spark and she occasionally rises above the awful material. But Jamie Dornan as Christian Grey does only perfunctory work.

The screenplay is idiotic and some of the lines that these actors have to deliver are unintentionally hilarious. But the movie is shot well. 

One day, it may become a bad movie/cult classic - the kind of film that people go to laugh at, like Showgirls. But for now, it's so boring it feels endless, and with two more sequels probably on the way, the only people getting truly tortured here is the audience.

Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating: One Apple