Critic Reviews

"Black” foregoes too much scene-setting, chronology and logic to stand completely on its own. As a piece of cultural criticism, however, it painstakingly eviscerates nearly every scene in “Grey” and skewers latent sexism, classism and ludicrous sexual innuendoes, as well as the original’s numerous plot holes.

The film manages to be surprisingly subversive with its humor.

When Wayans allows himself to deviate from his formula there are a few effective moments of un-self-conscious slapstick.

As with other staples of the screen-parody genre, the comic bull’s-eyes arrive only intermittently.

An aimless, if sporadically clever, parody that tirelessly conceives of human sexuality as punchlines for its shortsighted cultural ribbings.

Mostly, Fifty Shades of Black is exactly what you expect it will be. It hits all the notes of its source material, only it amps them up, and it seems to get the inherent absurdity of this premise even more than Sam Taylor-Johnson’s movie did.

Marlon Wayans is clearly getting off on the gags, but the lazy, hard humor, and elastic joke-making eventually has a numbing effect.

At a minimum, a parody should be funnier than the film it’s sending up, but Fifty Shades of Black, a quick-and-dirty riff on last year’s S&M romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” falls a laugh or two short of even that low standard.

The funniest bit involves a particularly sadistic brand of torture that he inflicts on Hannah.... She quite rightly screams in protest, as should anyone forced to watch this movie.

Adults may respond with a laugh every once in a while, but they’re unlikely to find Fifty Shades of Black a nonstop titter fest.