Fifty Shades series ends with risible Freed

Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades Freed. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

After three movies steeped in banal naughtiness and moderately tawdry acts, it's hard not to feel a little let down by the Fifty Shades cinematic experience. A trilogy that could have been wicked fun and trashy was tamer than it should have been, burdened by a strange chastity unbefitting a series rooted in sex. Fifty Shades Freed doesn't end the franchise on a sour note – it's far too poorly made to be fully boring – but it does continue the series' habit of finding an uninteresting way to present its salacious content. For a franchise about love and relationships, it’s surprisingly short on passion.

Fifty Shades Freed is at least efficient in setting the viewers' expectations. It takes around five minutes for Ana (Dakota Johnson) and Christian (Jamie Dornan) to get married, go on a whirlwind honeymoon, and commence in the first of many, many sex scenes. Only a few minutes later and the film brings back the franchise's villain Hyde (Eric Johnson) and lobs in its first stupidly laughable scene. That's pretty much how the rest of the movie goes. Fifty Shades Freed has a wash, rinse, repeat style to it: Christian and Anastasia get into some asinine argument; reconcile; have sex; get stalked by Hyde; have sex; get into another argument; get stalked again by Hyde; even more sex; and so on. As the film progresses the sequences serve as justifications for showing yet another “scintillating” scene with Christian, Anastasia, a pair of handcuffs, and a random toy from their closet, at least until the last act when all the drama comes to a lackluster fruition, the filmmakers suffering from a severe case of performance anxiety.

Most of this movie is a tease. The sex scenes tease something bold and risque, yet are served as a tame fantasy that falls short of their romance-novel roots. The nudity is gratuitous but incomplete, one shot coming ever so close to a full reveal of Christian Grey before pulling right back up. The drama has aspirations for trashy goodness, but are execute poorly enough to make them inappropriate for daytime soap operas. Fifty Shades Freed sometimes comes tantalizingly close to being interesting, only to veer back to being terrible.

The problems with this movie are all over the place. From bad cinematography to bad acting to a bland soundtrack to some really poor directing by James Foley (whose career includes two Fifty Shades movies and, surprisingly, the great Glengarry Glen Ross), Fifty Shades Freed falls short in every category. The easiest fail to point out though, what brings Fifty Shades Freed to the edge of Wiseau, is a remarkably terrible script by Niall Leonard (with a hat tip to book writer E. L. James). Every basic rule of scriptwriting is ignored or failed at. Dialog often contradicts itself and the events on screen, character motivations change for the sake of changing, the plot exists as a loose concept of a story that advances itself largely by accident. That the movie eventually ends comes as something of a surprise considering how many scenes are elongated or even inserted to hit the 105 minute mark. The poor writing really hits the characters the hardest though. Hyde remains an incomplete villain, a person who is evil for the sake of being evil. The extended Grey family and the one friend in Anastasia's life provide nothing of value to the narrative. And Christian and Anastasia remain unfulfilled characters, people whose motivations for life and for their marriage are frustratingly incomplete. After three movies covering some unclear expanse of time (I remain completely confounded by the timeline in the Fifty Shades series), neither of them has really grown as a character. Despite making what appear to be some compromises, Christian still always gets what he wants, subjugating Anastasia because he can. Anastasia flashes hints of rebellion, only to willingly become owned emotionally by Christian; it's remarkable that she even has one friend who is not related to Christian. None of this makes for a healthy relationship, despite how earnest the movie is at trying to justify it as such.

Fifty Shades Freed is bad, but in a risible fashion. There was a fair amount of open laughter during some of the more ridiculous moments, the audience recognizing and appreciating the absolute brilliance of the movie's incompetence. Not much about this movie is good, but it gets a minor pass for eliciting a few chuckles and not being a completely dire experience.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 105 minutes

Genre: Romance

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Target audience: The folks who've read the books and watched the other two movies.

Take the whole family?: Considering the lion's share of the movie is about sex, it's probably best to just hire a babysitter if you want to go out.

Theater or Netflix?: Or don't see it at all.

Can anyone in these movies act?: Ignoring the way too good for this Marcia Gay Harden, Dakota Johnson is the best thing this franchise has going for it. Despite the role's severe limitations, Johnson still shows flashes of charm and craftiness with Anastasia.

Watch this instead?: I watched Before Sunrise the night before this, which is an infinitely better movie about romance between actually interesting people.