Fifty Shades Darker Review
R: Strong Erotic Sexual Content, Some Graphic Nudity, and Language
Universal Pictures
1 Hr and 58 Minutes
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger, Luke Grimes, Eloise Mumford, Max Martini, Eric Johnson, Rita Ora, Victor Rasuk
REVIEW: Back in 2015, I was given the opportunity to attend the screening of Fifty Shades of Grey. I wasn’t of age to watch it by myself so I took my mom to the film. To avoid the obvious awkwardness that was watching Fifty Shades of Grey with my mom, I confidently told her I was going downstairs of that theater and watch Jupiter Ascending. Granted that was a bad idea, I had my own plans to watch the film my own way. That valentine’s Saturday a few of my friends and I went to see Fifty Shades of Grey. We were young sixteen-year-olds on the verge of seventeen at the time so yeah we snuck into it. We bought tickets to Selma and went right upstairs to find the theater for Fifty Shades of Grey and we all destroyed it. After that, we made a pact to watch and bash all of these films together. Two years have passed and we moved on. Some of my friends then aren’t my friends anymore now. Some friends went to college upstate. And some…just didn’t want to sit through another one of these. As for me, I went to just an advanced screening of Fifty Shades Darker in a theater filled with nothing but women of various ages. God was not my friend that night.
Following the events of Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia "Ana" Steele tries to move on from her relationship with Christian Grey. A wounded Christian convinces her to resume their romance under Ana's conditions. As the couple begins their normal relationship, Christian's past threatens to tear the couple apart.
THE GOOD: The only good thing about Fifty Shades Darker is that its comedy. The film has it’s intentional and unintentional comedic moments with the intentional laughs dominating the unintentional laughs. It has some very well written joke making it unquestionably still a better comedy than the Marlon Wayans comedy parody, Fifty Shades of Black.
THE BAD: If anyone was to ask me what Fifty Shades Darker was about I would tell them:
- Ana gets a job.
- Ana and Christian have sex some more,
- OH, and they fuck over people who pose “a threat” to their relationship.
In other words, this movie is about absolutely fucking nothing! NOTHING! If you saw the first film, you saw it all. This nothing but an 118-minute cringe fest from beginning to end that is some way somehow significantly worse than its predecessor. Fifty Shades Darker is the equivalent of seeing an incompatible couple getting back together after a week, only for their relationship to go back to stage one. This film is a series of cliché after cliché with stupid decisions in-between.
One of the first stupid things Ana does in the beginning of the film is attend a gallery event of the creepy photographer friend Jose that had a thing for her in the first film. You know he still has a thing for her and immediately you ask, “Wait, why are you still friends with this guy?” She doesn’t even know what the pictures are before she gets there so TAKE A GUESS WHAT THE PICTURES ARE OF! Oh yes, the pictures at the gallery are all pictures of Ana. And they’re not small, they’re huge. if that wasn’t creepy enough, Christian Grey comes back and immediately out creeps Jose by buying his pictures.
This is the first of many creepy shit Christian Grey does. This film doubles down on his bizarre creepiness. We learn that he keeps tabs on all the women he had sex with in the past by having files on them like he’s a fucking detective….but HE’S NOT A DETECTIVE! HE’S A BILLIONAIRE! He can afford it, but regardless it’s unnaturally disturbing and uncomfortable knowing that he's doing all this shit. He even gives Anastasia her file and she’s okay with it, The film boasts how much we’re going to dive into Christian’s backstory but it leaves us with the bare minimum. If it wants to go in-depth with Christian’s character as much as it boasts, TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK DOES HE DO. HOW DID HE EARN HIS MONEY? People may say, “Oh it’s the second movie, just go with it!” NO! I still wanna know because he pulls more creepy and bizarre shit than he did in the first movie. When we see how he was adopted, we see his adopted mother WORKING AS A DOCTOR! He wasn’t adopted by a rich family, he was adopted by a working class doctor.
So Mr. Grey please tell me,
We all know why you’re watching the film. It’s not for the romance or the story. It’s for the
For an R-rated film franchise that’s all about sex, these are the stupidest and unsexiest sex scenes ever. The film is just so repetitious with its sex scenes where we get the generic low angle shot of Jamie Dornan taking off his shirt and then having the same sex with Johnson over and over again. It’s so bland, you just want to yawn. The only thing new with each one is the bed, the sex item, and the song they play over it. With each new sex scene, a new song begins along with a new item. They play it like an unlockable item in a video game.
Seriously if you want your sex scenes to be “spicer” for the audience, stop promoting your own soundtrack. It’s not only obnoxious but it’s also annoying. It happened in the first film and it’s happening here. Nondiegetic sound is nice during a sex scene, but the film’s score would be effective opposed to a song off its soundtrack. You have DANNY ELFMAN as your music composer for the film. DANNY FUCKING ELFMAN! You can just get aroused by listening to his score alone. Listen to his Tim Burton Batman score and tell me you don’t turned on by it. The only song out of this film’s entire soundtrack that gets dignity is its main track, "I Don’t Wanna Live Forever" by Zayn and Taylor Swift. Not only it’s a good song, but it’s also the only song that isn’t played during a sex scene.
Everything that was tolerable in the first film is gone in this. One of the best performances from the first film was Dakota Johnson to me. In this, she’s terrible. She’s as stiff as Tommy Wiseau in The Room. A lot of her dialogue is "I…uhh..eh..Christian," and then a lot of moaning. We saw Johnson last year in How to Be Single where she was charming, funny, and most of all GOOD! All of that is heartbreakingly gone in here.
The direction Sam-Taylor Johnson is missed. Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography is missed, The production design by David Wasco (who is nominated for an Oscar right now because of La La Land) is missed the most. ALL OF THE PEOPLE THAT MADE THE FIRST FILM VISUALLY APPEALING TO LOOK AT ARE GONE! At least with the first film, they all attempted to make something from material that was based on an old women’s erotic fantasy of Twilight. Since every one of those crew members moved on to much better things, the production value on this dwindles from something to nothing. The most notable thing about this films' production design is Christian Grey's Chronicles of Riddick poster on his old bedroom wall. It has a bigger budget than the last film, but somehow it looks much cheaper. For a franchise that began as Twilight fan fiction, this film is the Breaking Dawn: Part 1 of Fifty Shades movies. Nothing happens in this movie. Scenes just happen out of nowhere only for the situation to be resolved in the whitest way possible.
One of the “biggest scenes" in the film is Christian being in a plane crash with a co-pilot. When everyone is just together and watching the news in anxiousness INCLUDING JOSE WHOSE INVITED TO EVERYTHING THE GREY'S DO FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER, Christian just shows up with a slight cut on his head. And you’re just there going "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CO PILOT?!" You’re contemplating if the film is going to discuss her or not. It takes two and a half sex scenes to address her well being.
The film wouldn’t even allow me like the side characters that are introduced in the film. Kim Basinger is there just to mess with Ana’s head, Bella Heathcote is wasted as being the film’s bait for you to get to your seat. But what hurt the most was Eric Johnson. When he’s introduced as Ana’s boss Jack Hyde, he’s charming and nice. But then, Christian (as the disturbed bastard he is) buys the company that she works at. You know that would piss off Hyde to know that his assistant is the girlfriend of his boss’ boss’ boss. So, when Ana doesn’t show up to work because she’s galavanting with her billionaire boyfriend he rightfully gets on her ass about it. I thoroughly liked this character because he was an actual boss. BUT THEN! Right then and there they turn him into the stereotypical boss that sexually harasses his assistants. It was the only slither of hope I had for a character only for him to be destroyed by inevitable movie trope.
It’s 2017 where the day after the presidential inauguration millions of women marched across the world for their rights opposing Donald Trump. Somehow I know thousands of those women will run to the theater to see this film about a young billionaire who’s on the same creepy level of Donald Trump having obligatory sex with this average girl. You have films like "Bad Moms" being an example of individual women wanting to be individual women. YOU HAD "HOW TO BE SINGLE" STARRING DAKOTA JOHNSON LAST YEAR WHICH WAS ABOUT INDIVIDUAL WOMEN! Now we’re back to the same degrading shit where you see Dakota Johnson’s butt and boobs and Jamie Dornan shirtless and in jeans. You sometimes see his ass, but it’s not as much as you see Johnson’s. You don’t even get to see I’m not even saying this out of any personal views, if it wants to be equal with its sexual content, by all means, show his penis. The film gratuitously shows Johnson in full frontal nudity so why not Dornan? But no, the best we get is Steele drawing lipstick all over the outline of his body and soon washing it off. You should protest to have Ana put a peg in Grey’s ass in the next film. I am offended for you women and you should be offended by having something like this be classified as your diversion film for this Valentine’s Day weekend.
LAST STATEMENT: As it misses all the production crew that made the first Fifty Shades valuable, Fifty Shades Darker is the same poorly constructed mess as it’s predecessor with more intolerable clichés that are both duller and dumber than ever before.
Rating: 1/5 | 21%
Super Scene: A romantic sail while the film’s most promoted track plays.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Comedy | NO FUCKING STORY |
| Some of Dornan's Performance | Dakota Johnson |
| Slithers of Cute Romance When They Are Not Having Obligatory Sex |
Waste of Newcomers |
| CLICHES GALORE | |
| Same ol' Gratuitous Sex Scenes | |
| Lack of Valuable Production Value | |
| WHY IS JOSE AT EVERYTHING ANA AND CHRISTIAN DO |
