Well, at least it’s over.
That’s all I could say as the credits rolled for Fifty Shades Freed. Our three-year cinematic journey through Christian Grey’s hilariously tame conception of BDSM has finally reached its...climax (sorry, I had to get that obvious, terrible joke out of my system. We’ll keep the review classy from here on out). All the questions have been answered, I think. Hot bodies have been ogled. Drama has been...virtually non-existent. And now, as we put away the whips, handcuffs, and ripped jeans, I can only say:
Is that it?
Is this seriously the raunchy, taboo erotica people have been getting their monocles bent out of shape over? Is this tame, sub-Cinemax snoozefest really enough to get John Q. Public’s blood pumping? Why is this bizarrely popular cultural touchstone such a bland, milquetoast, weirdly conservative movie?
Fifty Shades Freed accomplishes something almost impressive: It makes sex boring.
It’s popular (and easy) to dunk on the Fifty Shades franchise. People mocked it as a book series, they mocked it as a film trilogy, and they’ll mock when it’s inevitably rebooted as a TV show in 10 years. The visceral, persistent hatred people have for the Shades-verse might convince some that the films aren’t really that bad. Maybe some viewers will be lenient to the series finale, solely because it’s been so ruthlessly bashed by the public.
But I am not that viewer. The Fifty Shades franchise, and especially Freed, deserve every ounce of venom and disdain they get. This is an awful, bloated, dull series and now that it’s finally ended, I’m more than happy to dance on its grave. Now is not the time to grieve; now is the time celebrate.
What makes this series so detestable is its blatant contempt for the audience’s intelligence. The dialogue is so mind-numbingly inane that I’m convinced the script was written with crayon. No functioning adult could write a screenplay where a character proposes to his girlfriend in a nightclub, only for the crowd to immediately fall silent and applaud. Freed piles nonsense like this to the rafters and expects us to gobble it up.
I won’t sum up the plot because there is no plot. Ana and Christian, the least-likable couple since Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, are now married. Life seems perfect. But a series of subplots threaten to derail their love for the ages. Can these crazy kids stay together in a world that seems to want them apart? Who cares?
Freed isn’t a story; it’s a collection of loosely-connected scenes. Ana and Christian visit a beautiful locale, argue, have sex, and go somewhere new; rinse and repeat. Along the way they engage in the most tame versions of BDSM ever committed to film.
The acting is across-the-board atrocious. Jamie Dornan should spend less time working on his abs and more time in an acting class, because he is beyond terrible as Christian Grey. He wouldn’t pass muster in a porn-parody of Fifty Shades. Dakota Johnson is dull and tired as Ana. She wants to get this movie over with just as much as the rest of us. The supporting cast is dreadful, with the exception of Eric Johnson as a deranged stalker. He’s awful, but in a fun, so-bad-it’s-good way. He seems to be the only actor who knows he’s in a trash movie, so he acts accordingly.
Freed wants to serve as “glamour porn,” filling the screen with pretty locations and popular music. But it can’t even succeed at that low aim. The whole movie looks flat and cheap, with no eye-catching cinematography. The use of green screen is laughably bad and the Danny Elfman soundtrack (how the mighty have fallen) is limp and lifeless. It’s a boring movie to watch and hear.
Freed should at least be entertaining garbage. It should be something outrageous like The Neon Demon, Fatal Attraction, or Gone Girl. It should get us talking. But instead it’s a feature-length bore. The series ends how it began: Completely flaccid.
