"ARE you curious?" It's the question posed by every poster and trailer advertising this year's widely publicised, much-anticipated film, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Based on the novel by E. L. James, the movie shared the controversy generated by the book even prior to its release.

With this in mind, I really didn't know what to expect from the big screen adaptation, but I definitely didn't expect to be bored the entire time.

Sure, I'll admit that like everybody else I was kind of curious (millions of dollars spent on marketing will do that), but Fifty Shades is all hype with no pay off.

It tells the story of a mysterious, young, handsome, successful, ludicrously rich man with a troubled past and 'very singular' romantic taste, who finds a seemingly plain (but not so secretly beautiful), introvert that completely changes his world.

You've heard that story right? Fifty Shades feeds us the same, tired story with all of the mass appeal of a One Direction song and then pretends to take it to an extreme it never actually reaches.

All of this points to a larger issue.

Fifty Shades is the perfect example of a movie that exists purely as a product.

For a movie that built itself up as an erotic adventure about the nature of relationships, the movie took no risks and rehashed the same, stereotypical, almost immature ideas of love we've seen a thousand times before and tragically will probably see a thousand times again.

Quick Facts

• Release date: January 12, 2015
• Genre: Drama, Romance
• Running time: 125 mins
• Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
• Stars: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle
• Showing at:
• Limelight, Riverlink
• Birch Carroll and Coyle, Ipswich
• Reading Cinemas, Redbank
• Star rating: 0.5/5