‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ film is bound to please

Ladies, start your engines: “Fifty Shades” is here, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Roses are red, and so is the X-rated playroom of  bondage-loving billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) in this steamy, cheesy adaptation of the best-selling novel by E.L. James. Gone are the truly dreadful aspects of the book, and the biggest surprise may be that Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Grey have developed senses of humor. Still, the film never pretends to be other than what it really is: soft-core porn for the ladies, diluted with an “R” rating.

It’s a timeless story, the one about the naive young woman and the wolfish seducer. He’s Mr. Grey, model-handsome CEO of a large and vague corporation; English major Anastasia, filling in for her ailing journalism-student roommate Kate (Eloise Mumford), comes to interview him for their college paper, literally falling through his office doorway in her cartoonish clumsiness.

He’s complicated, we can tell — he’s hung a giant framed Rorschach blot in the hallway, uh-oh! — but he takes a shine to Ana’s unvarnished honesty. Soon, he’s showing up at her job in a hardware store, slyly asking for help finding cable ties and rope. (“You’re the complete serial killer!” she chirps, in what may or may not be a nod to Dornan’s chilling role on the BBC show “The Fall.”) No, he’s not a murderer — he just has “very singular tastes,” as he puts it when he gives Anastasia a fat contract asking her to become his legal sex slave. (Christian’s big on paperwork; for their first date, he serves her a glass of white wine and a nondisclosure agreement.)

The inscrutable Dornan’s a pretty good fit for control-freaky Christian, though he can’t keep that Irish lilt out of his lines. Johnson, for her part, makes Anastasia less annoying than the golly-gee-whiz hayseed she is in the book. Her character, round-shouldered in her schlumpy cardigans, has some backbone — she even drunk-dials Christian at one point, razzing him as “Mr. Fancypants.”

There’s been some buzz about the lack of chemistry between Johnson and Dornan, but most of their trysts have a decent amount of heat. Dornan, however, is not a natural smiler, and in an early scene in which he deflowers Ana, he looks downright grim-faced as he climbs atop. Whether or not this is appropriate to his romance-phobic character (as I’m guessing some book fans might argue), it’s a little unsexy on-screen.

And the massive success of the “Fifty Shades” franchise has made one thing abundantly clear: Women want more sex in their media. They’re not going to get as much of it here as in the novel, but no matter — it’s already quadruple the amount in any other mainstream movie women are likely to see this year, and it’s all aimed squarely at them. Sure, Anastasia’s spanked, blindfolded, tied to various pieces of furniture and smacked with a riding crop, but there are no scenes — outside of the film’s dark final act — in which Christian the sadist is seen as enjoying any of it more than she is.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel have also done away with the cringeworthy parts of the novel — no “inner goddess” references here — and reduced Anastasia’s irritating verbal tic of “Holy crap!” to one “Holy f - - k.” There’s humor in some unexpected moments, like Anastasia and Christian negotiating the terms of his dominant-and-submissive contract. (I’m guessing most boardrooms would never encounter the kind of terms they’re flirtatiously tossing around: “Genital clamps? Absolutely not.”) One bedroom scene, in which Christian’s growling at Ana to “say yes to being mine,” is hilariously interrupted by a voice outside the door: “Oh God,” he says, “it’s my mother.” (She’s Marcia Gay Harden, who, along with Jennifer Ehle as Ana’s mom and Victor Rasuk as her friend José, we see only in briefest passing.)

“Fifty Shades” is not without its howlers. More than once, we find Christian mournfully playing the piano, the instrument that’s lazy shorthand for emotional depth. Anastasia’s constant refrain of “Why won’t you let me in?” is a little too on the nose, aimed as it is at a guy who maintains a locked “playroom.” And Christian’s world is Rich Guy 101, all private air travel, Champagne and bespoke suits. But none of this matters. Mr. Grey will see you now — and I’m betting record-breaking numbers of female moviegoers are ready to be seen.