OK. It’s been a year. I have avoided publishing this because my sanity had never fully recovered from the last two reviews. Alas, the show must go on, as terrible as the show is. Seriously, a show like Springtime for Hitler is more tolerable.
I left off my last Fifty Shades lambast ten or so minutes in, which covered maybe 20 of my 50 pages of notes. You can read my first reviews here (1st movie) and here (1st 10 minutes of the 2nd). I’m exaggerating, but I did have pages and pages of critiques to talk about, as well as some reader questions that needed to be answered: “Did you actually pay money to see this movie?” and “Why would you do this to yourself?”
As to the first question: I did not pay money… but I don’t want to get into any sort of legal trouble, so let’s say I watched this movie in a… “theater.”
This “theater” had several different versions of the movie, one of which was OK, one of which cut out the sexy times, and one of which was in Russian. To be honest, I’m only 80% sure the English versions were even in English anyway, because the actors were definitely not human beings with logical speech patterns. I might have been hallucinating English when it really was all Russian.
The “theater” also attempted to give my computer three viruses via click ads, one of which was for MacSweeper (I have a PC, so I guess even the movie’s viruses are inept).
As to the second question, I really don’t know how to answer it. I guess hating on things make me hate myself less.
And with that dark note, I begin my breakdown of the next 40 agonizing minutes of Fifty Shades Darker. PLEASE read the last review for context.
Where we left off:
Jack the Ripper openly flirts with Ana in front of the HEAD OF HR. I wish I were kidding! Jack invites Ana (with encouragement from HR) to a bar. Christian meets Jack at the bar. Somehow, Grey is the ONLY ONE who acknowledges how goddamn creepy Jack is (sooooo rich coming from him).
Christian says, “He wants what’s mine” and Ana retorts with “That’s a little presumptuous.” I hypothesize that Grey is trying to out-creep Jack and I hate it. I still don’t know how long it’s been since Grey and Ana got back together, but probably not too long, so this is really uncalled for and possessive.
Ana and Christian go grocery shopping. They go shopping. For groceries. I have lost my mind at this point, my dehydration is getting to me. Yes, this movie feels like an expedition through the Gobi. No, I am not being melodramatic.
Ana and Christian buy Ben and Jerry’s (#sponsored) Vanilla Ice Cream. Who buys VANILLA Ben and Jerry’s? They don’t even eat it!
Whatever I can’t really care because it’s SEXYTIMES, EVERYONE!
A couple of notes:
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No protection.
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The music is really distracting.
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It took 20 minutes.
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The “dirty talk” is hilarious.
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Despite the movie’s demographic being straight women, Grey’s dick is never seen.
After sexy times, there’s an argument about money. For some reason that I can’t remember, Grey gives Ana a check for $24k. When she understandably says no, Grey says it doesn’t matter because he makes that much every 15 minutes.
Let’s do some number crunching.
If Christian makes $24,000 per quarter hour (doing god knows what), that means he makes about $2.3 million per day. Assuming he pays $1 in taxes for every $4 he makes, that means Christian makes $630+ million yearly. He is 27.
Christian adds $24,000 directly into Ana’s bank account because he has that information? This guy has more strikes than a no-hitter game in baseball, yet Ana only NOW gets suspicious. She yells at him for “owning her” and says that she just wants to have a normal relationship with her famous billionaire boyfriend.
He tells her that there are some places on his body that she can’t touch; he has very clear cigar burns on these parts, but Ana has him spell it out for her in red lipstick. He draws a square around his chest, and I immediately think of health class.
There are also two subplots that emerge: one with this creepy chick and one with Grey’s old mistress chick, but I’m only 30 minutes into this film, and I’m dying for something funny to happen.
And lo! The desert has a well! My prayers have been answered, and a funny scene has arrived!
After Grey hires a hairdresser for a personal appointment in no time at all and also has an entire wardrobe of clothing and lingerie setup for Ana as well, the scene begins.
In my notes, I have this marked down as “The Ben-Wa Scene.” I also underlined it three times, and for good reason.
The Ben-Wa scene.
Day 5… I think. I’ve had no food or water for the past three days. I don’t know if I’ll make it out alive. I keep trudging along.
For a little context that none of you asked for: Ana and Christian are going to some masquerade fundraiser ball thing (from the trailers), and Christian decides to engage in some “kinky fuckery” (Ana’s words. Did you know she was an English major?) and brings out some Ben Wa balls. He ungracefully stuffs them in her mouth, Dakota Johnson breaks character and smirks, and I cringe. Anastasia, the sex goddess of the century, gets upset when Christian asks her to bend over and goes:
“You’re not gonna put those in my butt.” LOL, Hot.
Christian bends her over anyway and inserts them like a sexy gynecologist. I think I might be making the scene sound sexier than it actually is. It really isn’t. At all. I don’t even think they were trying to make it sexy.
Finally, they arrive at the Masquerade fundraiser ball thing, suddenly it’s night time, and the party begins. And it’s just exposition, so….. Skip!
40 minutes in, and we get a SexyTimes scene!
Some more notes:
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Every note from the last sexytimes scene.
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Ana was wearing lingerie, but not when Grey takes the dress off.
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Grey spanks her and suddenly Ana is into it, even though she wasn’t during the last movie.
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Ana’s makeup, including her lipstick, stays on the entire time.
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Ana’s hair stays perfect.
Then, more exposition, some masked guy snaps a photo of the Grey family for no reason, Grey’s old mistress chick harasses Ana, and the creepy chick vandalizes Ana’s car. But none of you care about that at all because it’s time for THE BOAT SCENE!
Ana and Grey go on a boat and talk about Grey’s dead mother. That’s about the gist of it, but what pisses me off about this scene is the music. You know, the song by Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik, that played on the radio once every hour? Yeah, this is the scene they play it in. It’s the exact same scene from the last movie, but instead of a plane, it’s a yacht.
This scene is infuriating because it proves to me that this movie is pure cash-grabbing bullshit. The director didn’t even try with the little bit of exposition this movie has. There is not enough plot to make a movie, so to pad out an already painfully long story, they add in a bullshit scene on a fancy boat, and people pay attention because of the song. Ana just had her car VANDALIZED. She was on the boat because the creepy chick could be in Grey’s house, waiting for them. But NO. Nobody cares, because yacht! Let’s have fun on a boat that Grey knows how to drive! Because he can also fly a plane! And a helicopter! And he still has time to make $630 million dollars doing…business?
I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t think the internet knows what’s going on (this video is appallingly devoid of content). This is the end of Part Two. I am 50 minutes in. It only gets better from here… or does it?