Drop your pants everyone! Fifty Shades Darker is here to fulfill your desperate suburban sexual repression. It’s so stupid that its kinda fun at times and might give you some kinky tips, a great sex soundtrack, and a chance to see what a Pacific Northwest vacation looks like.
Darker pickes up where Fifty Shades of Grey left off. Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) is determined to get Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) back. Ana has started a new job at a publishing company run by Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson), but Christian is insistent, so she relents and takes him back. However, there’s plenty of red flags for Ana: her job creates insane jealousy in Christian, she’s potentially being stalked, and before committing to Christian she has to deal with all these pieces of his past that keep popping back into his life. She contemplates these things between sex toys, spanking, and the Red Room of Pain.
This movie is going to get the same rating as the first film, but for entirely different reasons. The first film surpassed my (rock bottom) expectations with its beautiful cinematography and a subtle undercurrent of humor. This film gets the same rating for embracing the fact that Darker is pornography for the people living in places where it is forbidden. Pornography is usually a string of vignettes in between humping sessions. Fifty Shades Darker is exactly that, except it is beautifully shot during each part instead of shoddily produced like a porno. It’s almost as if someone conducted a study and figured out people start getting restless at 10 minutes, so we need to insert some nudity by that point. Also the vignettes barely string together, so people can feel comfortable going to pee immediately after a hook up knowing that what they would be missing is irrelevant to them until the boobs and butts come out again.
Darker embraces ALL aspects of pornography though too. Character identity means nothing. Almost each vignette contains a part of story that wouldn’t imply sex needs to happen, and then Ana, Christian, or someone else will say something to the equivalent of “That’s hot!” and the clothes come off. Due to the time constraints of requisite nudity, every vignette is rushed through. Many of them contain a character saying, “Don’t worry, I took care of it” so the beautiful outfits can be disrobed, like the horror setup of Christian’s ex. But here’s the best example of porno stupid in Fifty Shades Darker: something happens to a character’s vehicle, and they crash in the Seattle Wilderness. This character is part of a very high profile public family, so all forces would be hunting for them to find them, and they would presumably be hurt from a crash. But the person shows up at Christian’s apartment, with ZERO explanation as to how they escaped, how they trekked through the wilderness, how they avoided a hospital stay, how they avoided getting hurt, etc. That scene is supposed to be an emotional release to get you ready for shower sex, but I simply burst out laughing at the screenplay’s audacity. If you embrace the stupid and banal erotica, Fifty Shades Darker will be fun enough for you.
Darker, like the first film, could have been something interesting. There are very few movies about how to negotiate an adult sexual relationship without devolving into lurid porn. Darker just embraces the porn, so if I were you, just grab a mask, your fanciest outfit, and be aroused, because you sure as hell won’t be artistically awed. If you don’t, you’ll end up like Jack Hyde: on the short end of the worst supervillain story of all time.