Fifty Shades Darker

It starts out as an alright soft porn flick for the ladies, with an almost nonexistent storyline that is only there to hold together all the hot and sweaty scenes, which appear about every 15 minutes. That would make it a two-star movie, or maybe even a three-star if you haven’t had a proper orgasm in a while. And then the plot thickens and the movie starts to aspire to look like a serious drama, resulting in fits of uncontrolled laughter of even the ladies in the audience. It’s really much worse than you’d expect, a lot worse than the first installment. It’s so bad it is basically unrivalled in the cinemas. (02/07/2017)

It's the same as the first one. Simply a bad movie that you expect to be at least sexy, but it's not. Dakota is sexy in one single scene, otherwise she's incredibly awkward and I'm surprised she enjoyed playing this. Jamie is fine, but his character goes to shit, not to mention that he doesn't give a damn about the bullshit they're saying. And is there something rougher here? No chance. (04/10/2017)

One of the few films where nothing actually happens in its two hours of running time and it's a slightly overwrought advertisement for Jamie Dornan's muscles, his penthouse and his swaggering businessman role. All this is much more entertaining than a kind of pseudo plot or bickering in bed, without any eroticism as everything is basically just for effect and fake. One of the emptiest and most pointless sequels in the history of A-list Hollywood production. (04/12/2017)

The problem with Fifty Shades Darker is not that it doesn’t know when to end, but that it never properly starts. An essential tenet of screenwriting is that without conflict, there is no drama. Niall Leonard is apparently unaware of this. The popular statement that “nothing happens in it” applies to such an extent to few other films. Any attempt at suspense or plot twists thus comes across as unintentional comedy because of its lack of substance. Both of the protagonists do basically the same things that they did in the first instalment, though one would think that this time it is a voluntary decision on Ana’s part (she didn't know before that sex doesn’t have to be painful), which is only half true (when, for example, she tells her partner what to do to her). Grey continues to act like a faithless, possessive emotional manipulator who again lays out the rules of the game and doesn’t give much choice to his ingenuous partner, who likes to be bought a big bouquet of roses, a set of Apple products and luxury lingerie. As a result, moments that should seem romantic are actually rather creepy, because we don’t see any sincere feelings behind them. It’s also quite difficult to sympathise with the female protagonist, who has Ben Wa balls inserted into her vagina and only then asks what they are for. The adjective “vanilla” applies less to the central couple’s relationship than to the film as a whole, in which the unfortunate lack of knowing winks at the viewer prevents it from being an expression of self-reflection or an act of subversion (which, I'm afraid, should not have been a scene like something out of Magic Mike). Though the narrative of the first instalment was marked by a similar ponderousness, I found it generally thought-provoking on a deeper level of meaning. The second film is just a sequence of pretty but completely hollow shots that barely hold together (on the other hand, it’s possible that I’m just too annoyed by the film to give it any further thought). It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a similarly arrogant wager on the certainty that the target audience, longing to see a bit of harmless “kinky fuckery”, will come to the cinema anyway. 30% (02/08/2017)

The title should be 117 minutes of boredom. The only thing worth looking at is Dornan's body, and even that doesn't save the film. I would like to see Dakota Johnson in a deeper role, I enjoy her acting, it's so casual and natural. I don’t mind watching something undemanding every now and again, but this was about nothing. The first episode was a star more entertaining... (04/21/2017)