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

Ask Away

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.

Fifty Shades Darker edges closer to parody than scintillation

Dakota Johnson and Jaime Dornan in Fifty Shades Darker. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Sometimes deciphering the difference between parody and sincerity is a fool's errand. A movie like Fifty Shades Darker is almost impossible to evaluate for this reason; using simple degrees of good and bad is difficult if viewers don’t know if the movie brilliantly incompetent or incompetently brilliant. What parts of this movie were intended by the filmmakers to be humorous because they're bad, and what parts of this movie try to be good but are still awful anyway? Are the filmmakers perpetually in on the joke of what they're doing or has the joke entered orbit above their heads?

I debated those questions with a friend who came to the screening with me, and I am not completely sure one way or the other, although I do have my suspicions based in part on the series history. The first film of the series, Fifty Shades of Grey, is a sincerely awful film carried modestly by Dakota Johnson's performance as the quiet heroine/Bella Swan ripoff Anastasia Steele. Fifty Shades Darker has many of the same problems of its predecessor, particularly sloppy dialog, a dreadful lead performance by Jamie Dornan and a childish view of the sexual content it showcases. Fifty Shades Darker also sports a less than stellar turn by Johnson, who doesn't appear to care all that much about her character or anything else around her.

It shares the same problems, but not necessarily in the same way as Fifty Shades of Grey. There is no plot beyond Christian and Ana reconnecting after parting ways in the first film: Everything else involves sex, visiting Christian's family (including Marcia Gay Harden and Rita Ora), more sex, unwanted sexual advances by Ana's boringly handsome boss Jack (Eric Johnson), additional awkward sex, some inane arguments resolved far too quickly, even more sex, some drama with a stilted ex, another round of sex, visits from Ana's old friends, and fireworks that symbolize sex. Structuring a cohesive, interesting narrative around that is close to impossible, and dragging that all out for nearly two hours is a cinematic crime. And even the parts in which there is an iota of narrative cohesion are hindered by an overarching lack of logic and, again, the dialog. That last point is one of the oddest parts of Fifty Shades Darker, with conversations starting but either  never coming to a satisfactory ending or getting returned to several scenes later without context as to why, for example, Ana would be upset with Christian but never bring up that point during breakfast. It is almost inconceivably sloppy, so close to being purely idiotic by the filmmakers it could, perhaps, be intentional.

And now we're back to the question of whether this is meant to be serious at all or a joke at the expense of Fifty Shades of Grey. Academy Award winners Harden and Kim Basinger each vamp up their fleeting moments on screen, offering one of the rare times in cinema one Oscar winner will slap the heck out of another in a beautifully campy moment. There is so much camp to be found in Fifty Shades Darker, from the Harden/Basinger slap to Jack's melodramatic scene at the end to some awkward images of extras clearly aware of the mischief Ana and Christian are getting into right behind them. It's tough to call this film properly over the top; doing so would indicate there is some max capacity that clearly does not exist in Fifty Shades Darker. Gauging whether or not those little inklings are done with a wink and a nod or a straight face remains tricky to parse out.

In thinking about it, I tend to edge closer to it being somewhat knowing but largely bad in an unintentional way. Those script issues are too severe to be intentional – even parodies have a grasp on basic narrative concepts – and the lack of effort Johnson and Dornan put in their performances feels more intentionally lazy than purposefully terrible. It is bad enough though to earn a large number of guffaws from audience members over how ludicrous the movie is in its entirety and from one scene to the next. Fifty Shades Darker isn't worth shelling out $12 for a ticket, but it would be great to watch with some friends to laugh at the poorly constructed and salaciously milquetoast saga of Christian and Ana.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 118 minutes

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: Anyone who read the books or liked the first movie.

Take the whole family?: I'm going to say no for this one.

Theater or Netflix?: Stream it with some wine and friends.

What else is off about this film?: One thing that does bug me is the way the movie treats Anastasia. After leaving Christian, she is depicted at first as a woman who has her priorities in order and knows what she wants out of her second relationship with Christian. The independence ends in the first act when she starts to cede to Christian's whims and reverting back to who she was in the last film, which is rather frustrating.

Watch this instead?: Even with how ridiculous this film is, it still falls short of the insane brilliance that is Tommy Wiseau's The Room. Also worth a watch for people looking for enjoyable bad cinema is the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Boy Next Door, which is ridiculous on so many levels.