Fifty Shades Darker (2017)

[Ezen Baklattan]

Review, Discuss, Debate, Celebrate.

 

Do you wanna live forever, or just keep calling their name?

 

[Avatree]

Not as terrible and cringe-inducing as the first one, and I wasn't completely bored.

 

It tries some bizarre things to attempt to develop characters but I found it amusing to laugh at. "Let's not run before we can walk" an apt quote.

 

The film has a very strange idea of what extreme "kink" is - lightly slapping her arse, holding her legs open and putting a small toy in her vagina... yeah not very impressed.

 

Also why did he wear his trousers in every sex scene? Like he didn't even pull them down he was just dry humping her I swear.

 

This was one of most unerotic videos I've ever seen.

 

However I was squished next to a small moon in my seat in the cinema and think she got a bit too excited. Each to their own... I guess?

Edited February 12, 2017 by Manchester by the Tree

[filmlover]

Really fucking terrible, and makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like a total masterpiece in comparison. At least that movie attempted to make some sort of statement. This is, aside from a few brief moments where campy inspiration shines through, a lethally boring combination of misguided romance, feeble characterization, sex scenes (and there are a bunch of them) that aren't in the slightest bit erotic, flimsy attempts at suspense that don't generate any kind of reaction beyond indifference, and some really dreadful writing/dialogue (be gone now, E.L. James!). Trudging through this movie's two hour running time is a chore. The performers are pretty lost: poor Dakota Johnson drifts through the movie completely devoid of appeal as the Anastasia character is stripped of whatever likability she had before, while Jamie Dornan sports a disdained look on his face throughout the movie that suggests he was forced to make these as the result of losing a bet. Nothing of interest happens at all in the movie until the end, which concludes on a major cliffhanger (and a tease in the end credits for the next movie) as the door is left open for this series to come back and ruin Valentine's Day one last time next year. D

[ddddeeee]

This was hilarious.

 

Poor Kim Basinger though.

[filmlover]

2 minutes ago, ddddeeee said:

This was hilarious.

 

Poor Kim Basinger though.

The scene towards the end where Johnson, Dornan, and Marcia Gay Harden all took their turns bitch slapping her was hysterical. The movie needed much more of that and less of everything else.

[Webslinger]

I'm doubling back to capsule reviews for everything I saw but neglected to write about in 2017, and for whatever reason, I decided to start with the worst movie I've seen in the last 365 days:

 

After a thoroughly average first installment that tried oh-so-desperately to save face, Fifty Shades Darker is a few steps closer to what the franchise’s fans – of both genuine and ironic varieties – surely wanted: a film whose sensibilities are faithfully aligned with those of the source material. Genuine fans will probably enjoy characterizations more consistent with those of the book, while those of us who are here for a “so-bad-it’s-good” trainwreck get just that. The first film’s veneer of respectability and halfhearted attempts to find anything insightful to say about the troubling dynamics of the central relationship are gone; in their place, we get a plot that lurches from one hilariously ludicrous scenario to another with no regard for believable motivations, realistic reactions to increasingly stupid and/or dangerous incidents, or whether the two leads like each other enough to be convincing as grudging acquaintances – let alone passionate lovers! (And the “kinky fuckery” is paradoxically more graphic and more sterile this time around – just witness Ana’s non-reaction to having some metallic balls inserted into her.) Neither Dakota Johnson – whose effort is dialed down near zero after trying so desperately to find anything of value in the protagonist in the first film – nor Jamie Dornan seem even the slightest bit interested in anything happening here, and all other performers with the exception of Kim Basinger – who appears to be having at least a little fun vamping it up – look like they just want director James Foley to yell “cut!” so that they can escape their misery and deposit their paychecks. Nevertheless, because of how fascinatingly bad this movie is, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself while watching it; everyone involved behind the camera does their best to polish this turd, and the actors, disinterested as they are, know exactly what kind of movie they’ve signed up for and do their best to make E.L. James’s “vision” come across as hilariously awkwardly on the screen as it surely did on the page. (I only made it to page 75 of the first book, but mainly because of being too busy to finish it; it’s horrible, but it’s that special kind of horrible that simply demands to be marveled at.) I’ll confess that I have no idea where the story can possibly go from here (just about every tension seems resolved), but I’m morbidly curious to see what unintentionally hilarious fuckery lies ahead in the grand finale. 

 

D+

 

Stray Thoughts:

- I'm half-tempted to nominate Dakota Johnson's monotone "You're not putting that in my butt" for Line Reading of the Year. Bonus points for Jamie Dornan's equally monotone "It doesn't go in your butt" response.

 

- I know plenty of savvy film nerds already said the same thing back when the first film came out, but if you're genuinely interested in seeing a BDSM romance that doesn't suck and actually has something interesting to say, check out the 2002 Maggie Gyllenhaal comedy Secretary. It's weird, funny, and way sexier and more heartfelt than anything in this franchise.

 

- As someone who's actually from Washington and has visited Seattle countless times, I can't help but laugh any time these movies try to remind us that they're set in Seattle. The biggest tell, as in the Twilight movies, is any mention of the Mariners; anyone from here knows that they suck and that mentioning them will merit one of three responses: an eye-roll; a lamentation that they suck as badly as they have for the last decade-and-a-half; or an indifferent shrug of the shoulders.