Fifty Shades Darker (2017) Review!!!

Synopsis – While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her.

My Take – Let me start by saying this, please don’t judge me for being one of the many who actually ended up seeing this next installment of E.L James’ Fifty Shades trilogy which is supposed to feature more lip-biting, leg-grabbing, cash-flashing nonsense than ever before. Two years ago, Universal Pictures agreed to finance the preceding unreasoning erotic-romance adaptation thought up by British novelist E. L. James, with such recklessness that it led to a storm of dissimilar opinions between film critics and audience, especially regarding its poor screenplay and lack of chemistry between the leads, despite which the film managed to earn around $571 million globally on a budget of $40 million. I personally hated the film and thought the film was non-sensical, poorly written and just painfully dull considering the film supposedly centers on BDSM. I firmly believe that if the film had employed a good writer, director, and a couple of better actors, it could have been an awesome, sexy, psychological thriller. However, the filmmakers instead went for the romance angle, and the finished product was a painfully bad mess. With its sequel, I went in with an open mind, hoping that maybe the producers learned from the first film by replacing director Sam Taylor-Johnson with director James Foley (Fear), who would possibly make a decent film. Unfortunately, that’s not the case as the sequel is even a worse laughable, piece of garbage. Continuing on from where the original left off with an utterly tedious and ridiculous story, nothing about this film grabbed me, whilst it loses any sense of the sleek, or even risky, nature of the first film. And whilst the first film was tedious for its almost inactive story, following a weak Anastasia being suppressed by Christian, the fact that the sequel, which does have a modicum of character development, fails to provide any more intrigue or drama is unbelievable. It’s not just the non-existent plot and hammy acting that let this film down, although they were major factors, the chemistry between the two leads was like watching two planks of wood getting together. None of what I saw made me believe he was an irresistible sex god with a dark side. And with Anastasia, let’s just say biting ones lip every time something is suggested gets a bit old.

The story follows Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), right after at the end of the 1st film. Repelled by the amount of pleasure Christian received from punishing her, Anastasia breaks up and heads back to living her own life by joining a small publishing company run by Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson), who is also attracted to Anastasia. But Christian cannot just let her go – he sends her flowers on her first day in a new job; and when her friend Jose (Victor Rasuk) has an exhibition of his photography including six out-sized pictures of Anastasia, Christian buys the lot. After his continuing persistence, Anastasia agrees to have dinner with Christian and they reignite their passionate romance though she still has reservations despite his insistence to give her money. However things complicate when Anastasia realizes that she is stalked by one of Grey’s old submissive Kate Kavanaugh (Bella Heathcote) and despite Christian insisting that she is the only woman in his life, he is still in touch with his old lover and 1^st BDSM partner, Elena Lincoln (Kim Basinger), who is also a close friend of his adoptive mother, Grace Trevelyan Grey (Marcia Gay Harden). These strange occurrences never amount to much and the drama is always overshadowed by the need to show another sex scene. This film steps into the dark side of love once again, or at least it believes to be under its soft porn message which includes lots of groping, some nudity, very little real passion or sexual tension. For anyone who thought that this was a beautiful, love story, you are wrong! This is one of the cheesiest, corniest, most awkward-comedic films I have ever seen. But hey, it worked for a great comedy where the jokes on the film. Seriously, the scenes were so bad you couldn’t help but laugh. I think this film was better in the aspect to take it a bit more “serious” than the 1st film. Writer Niall Leonard and James Foley are a dangerous duo for the romance genre, and this should not be taken as a compliment. On this occasion, they coat it a dismal, unsatisfactory and unfounded thriller aroma; a series of circumstances poorly posed, developed and resolved. How is it possible that after being on the brink of death, he just wants to have more sex? The film also has no structure whatsoever. It felt like the writers just made the events of the story up as they went along without an outline or plan as to how the story was going to go. For instance, there is a random scene that lasts less than five minutes where Christian is involved in some sort of accident, then comes back from the accident completely unharmed and the event is never mentioned again. It was utterly pointless and only served to tack on a few extra minutes onto the run time.

Besides, new characters inclusion is simply execrable, providing irregular performances, with traces of university film and a limited run-time on screen for revealing their talents, wasted time in close- ups of the main leads looking each other in the eyes. The direction and intention of this film from the onset seem so cynical that it really makes me genuinely dislike the film and the people involved in it. While the 1st film, though extremely boring, had people really trying to make something that is of artistic merit. The cinematography, production design, and lighting of the first film, in particular, were really quite impressive. But with this one, the makers throw that level of effort out of the window because they know that the audience is going to hoard into the theater anyways. The lighting, for instance, is dimmer here than it was before probably just to signify that it is a “darker” film than its predecessor. It has no role to actually play with the characters or the film’s plot or tone. The aesthetics of the film, however, are the least of its problems. And of course, with this being an erotic film, I have to talk about the sex scenes. In short, they’re bad, just very bad. From what I remember of the previous film, there are less sex scenes here. However, that doesn’t stop them from being completely abysmal, awkward, and painful. The sex scenes are very poorly edited, shot, and put together. Moving on to the performances, honestly, I like Dakota Johnson. She’s a perfectly good actress who’s put in some great performances over the past few years, but this really isn’t one of them. In an almost identical situation to Kristen Stewart in Twilight, Johnson gives a laughably underwhelming performance lumbered by horrific dialogue and a tedious character. She can do a lot better, but she’s not able to bring her talents to the table in this film, and that makes her just as poor as everything else here. Agreed, Jamie Dornan is great looking guy, but here his acting is clumsy that every scene is just awkward. When he was supposed to be angry and furious to Ana and he shouted “Where the f**k have you been”, it was hysterical. I mean, there was no character or anger in his voice or body language, and it felt like he had never used the f-word before. It was like he was reading the script, but had no idea what else he was supposed to do. The supporting casts of talented actors are wasted, while among the newer additions to the cast, Bella Heathcote & Eric Johnson play their parts well, while the much hyped addition of Kim Basigner was nothing more than a ploy as she hardly has any screen time. The only factors which I enjoyed in both the films are its exciting soundtracks. But in spite of what I or anyone says the film has currently earned $368.8 million (and still running in cinemas) and final entry (Fifty Shades Freed) marked for release on February 9, 2016. On the whole, ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ is an appalling set of mediocre performances, atrocious writing, unintentionally funny dialogs and an absurd screenplay.