Fifty Shades of Grey, a bad book and now a bad movie, will not be coming to the UAE.

Not unless the movie’s distributors make 35 minutes of cuts from its 125 minutes of running time.

The movie is not banned from the UAE.

UAE authorities are happy to have it appear here — as long as “Grey” distributors make the requested cuts.

It’s up to them, really.

The position of the National Media Council, here in the UAE, is that it does not censor films.

It looks at them, and tells the distributors how their film can get into theaters here. Then the distributors can make those cuts. Or not.

Juma Al Leem, the NMC director of media content, told The National that the regional  distributors, Four Star Films in Lebanon, opted not to release.

Their choice, is the UAE’s position.

Al Leem did say that four “sexually explicit scenes” were up to seven minutes long, and that takes us a long way towards the 35 minutes of missing Grey.

I don’t know anyone who is too worked up about this. Of course, not all “Grey” fans are keen to share their … keenness.

The movie apparently grossed $81 million on its first weekend in North America, which demonstrates interest in the film. This despite some punishing reviews.

As our colleague here in the UAE wrote:

Reviewers have been less than kind, however – the movie has an average rating of only 3.9 out of 10 on IMDB.com, and a dismal 26 percent on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.

Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times wrote: “Fifty Shades of Grey the movie, for the record, is not quite as bad as Fifty Shades of Grey the book. But that’s not saying much.” While the UK’s The Guardian newspaper described it as “depressingly mainstream” and criticized its “strictly daytime soap” performances.

Anyway, those of us here in the Gulf will not be contributing to the box office, nor will we be weighing its merit from big-screen viewing — unless those 35 minutes come out, after all.