Fifty Shades Freed (2018)

[baumer]

Discuss

[filmlover]

Just as awful as Darker. I'm struggling to remember another film franchise as completely devoid of plot as this one: you could combine both sequels and condense it down to an hour-and-a-half and still barely have enough story to justify a movie. So much of the movie relies on ridiculous contrivances and manufactured (and easily resolved) drama that E.L. James clearly only created to try and stretch such a paper thin premise out to a trilogy.

 

And who knew so much fucking could be so boring?

 

The actors can't rise above the material either. Poor Dakota Johnson can only do so much with such lame material; at least now she can move on to projects far more worthy of her talent. Jamie Dornan remains as miscast as ever, but making Christian Grey an endearing character is a challenge that would leave any actor defeated.

 

Aside from the occasional (often unintentional) chuckle here and there, there's nothing of worth here. But hey, at least there won't be any more of these. Good riddance.

 

D

[Barnack]

37 minutes ago, filmlover said:

But hey, at least there won't be any more of these. Good riddance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey:_Fifty_Shades_of_Grey_as_Told_by_Christian

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/812308/Fifty-Shades-of-Grey-new-book-confirmed-EL-James-Darker-Christian-perspective

 

[Webslinger]

Some thoughts I typed up elsewhere last night:

 

Before dispensing with way more thoughts than I ever thought I'd write about a dirty Twilight fanfic, let's establish the one and only rule of the official Fifty Shades Drinking Game: Every time Christian Grey says something that should be an immediate red flag for any interested woman (or man), drink. I did it with Pepsi at this movie and had to pee like BoJack Horseman by the one-hour mark.

 

Also before dispensing with more thoughts than any self-respecting human should write about the cinematic adaptation of "novels" that purportedly use phrases like "Holy cow!" and "My inner goddess did her happy dance" without a whiff of irony, allow me to float several way more interesting movies that could have resulted from grafting other movies' universes into this one:

- I guess the first one could be construed as a vague Phantom Thread spoiler, so:

Spoiler

- Alma from Phantom Thread replaces Ana and turns the tables on Christian so hard that he'll never set a toe out of line again.

- "Ana" wakes up as Amy from The Social Network, remarks on what a crazy dream she had, and continues to banter with Sean Parker in the early days of Facebook.
- The characters from Secretary show up and show this couple how a relationship founded on BDSM is really done.
- Johnny from The Room replaces Christian entirely. I have no idea what this movie would be like, but that's part of the fun!
- Sloppy, glaringly obvious reshoots with the Cloverfield monster reveal that this franchise was part of the Cloverfield universe all along. (Hey, it would still be just a shade - hehe - better than The Cloverfield Paradox.)

 

Now, before I dispense with more thoughts than I ever thought I would write about a sex-based trilogy about as sexy as a colonoscopy, I should mention that I've never seen as little chemistry between supposed romantic interests across a multi-film franchise as I did here. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan haven't appeared interested in even trying to portray some semblance of heat between their characters since the first film, and nothing changes here. But now that the end is in sight, their individual performances have a little more life in them than in the previous installment. Sadly, their competent performances are in the service of a script that concludes a trilogy with astonishingly little character development since the first film. Christian is still a manipulative, controlling, psychologically abusive jerk, and Ana is still a naive dear in the headlights who knows shockingly little about the - er - "toys" in the red room (but to her credit, she does appear to have overcome her clumsiness, and unlike Bella Swan, she didn't need to become a vampire to do it). Other characters come and go too, but none matter besides Eric Johnson's Jack Hyde, a villain so obviously and solely villainous that I wouldn't be surprised if his original name was Evil McEvilton. Bless the film's heart, it tries to involve the villain in the climax in a shocking and meaningful way (unlike the last film, where every conflict was solved pretty easily and well ahead of the ending), but it falls as limp as... (you know, you can go ahead and fill in your own punchline here).

 

I swear I'm almost getting to the point, but before I dispense with way more thoughts than I ever thought I'd write about a franchise whose strongest quality is that at least it left even worse material from the books out, let's talk about the reason most of the audience will be there: the sex. It's tame. Real tame. And there's surprisingly little of it in this film. There's a scene in which Ana says something to the effect of "That's something that happens during sex, of which we tend to have a lot" (I think I got most of it - I remember it being a clunky line), to which I wanted to yell out "Not in this movie you haven't!" For a film that sells itself on sex, it seems disinterested in letting these characters hit the sheets, assorted bars in the red room, or anywhere else they could do the deed or some pseudo-kinky variation of it, and the most discussed act in the film - one involving a certain product made by Messers Bennett and Jerry of Vermont - is far more silly than anything else - like, silly enough to make Ben Affleck running animal crackers over Liv Tyler's chest in Armageddon look dignified by comparison.

 

Okay, just once more, before I dispense with way more thoughts than I ever thought I'd write about a film that already feels like an extremely dated and problematic product of a bygone pre-MeToo era, a few more miscellaneous potshots:
- Across three movies, the filmmakers have demonstrated that they know Seattle about as well as I know quantum mechanics.
- Why populate the soundtrack with so many pop songs when you have Danny Freaking Elfman as your composer?
- Speaking of the soundtrack: playing a soft pop song during a passion-less sex scene instantly makes some of said sex scenes feel reminiscent of the infamous lovemaking scenes from The Room.
- For all the film's faults, at least characters occasionally have snarky moments where they explicitly acknowledge how insane certain events are, but then they revert back to their normal selves. It's eerily like the scene in Get Out where a camera flash brings Andre back just long enough to scream the title a few times.

 

There's probably more that I could say about this film or the trilogy as a whole, but to repurpose the gimmick I've already beaten to death in this review: I've already dispensed with way more thoughts than I ever thought I would write about these movies... and more thoughts than I imagine went into their making. But at least I had lots of fun hate-watching.

 

D+? Yeah, we'll go with that.

Edited February 15, 2018 by Webslinger

[filmlover]

I kinda loved how the movie introduced a potential storyline in which Ana's BFF is worried that her boyfriend/Christian's adopted brother is cheating on her with the bimbo architect he previously had a fling with and Ana sees the two on the street being all cozy with each other, only to just drop it completely by revealing she was helping him find an engagement ring to propose to the BFF. It's like they were trying to reinforce the notion this franchise is really about nothing at all.

[ddddeeee]

The fiction editor of a book store being able to hack into vaults and helicopters had me creased.

 

Needed Basinger though - wasn't she in the trailer?

[filmlover]

4 hours ago, ddddeeee said:

The fiction editor of a book store being able to hack into vaults and helicopters had me creased.

 

Needed Basinger though - wasn't she in the trailer?

Her scenes got cut from the final film.