It’s Valentine’s, and that means there’s no better movie to avoid this year than “Fifty Shades Freed.” More like “Fifty Shades of Sh**.” This movie is what you see when your girlfriend chooses what movie to see on Valentine’s Day, and there is not another “Sex in the City” film to bore everyone to death.
The movie was not nearly as excruciating as I expected it to be, however. Maybe it was because I brought a date to this film, or I could have been having a psychotic flashback to “Valley of the Dolls” or “Grease II.” It could have also been because of the production of the “film” was semi-competent (highly improbable).
Having said that, this movie is incoherent, lazy and genuinely disturbing, both for the critic and the casual movie-goer. If you decide to watch this film, remember: it is in no way representative of reality — it’s someone’s twisted fantasy of how life and love could/should be. The sad reality of this film is that someone (probably a movie executive who funded it) actually believed it was a good idea.
This film begins with Ana Steele and Christian Grey immediately after they start the most dysfunctional and disliked marriage in all of cinema (save for Anakin and Padme). Grey is immediately degrading towards his new wife, obsessed with controlling her and making sure that she doesn’t disobey him. What a great way to start off a marriage! Soon after, Ana discovers that she has a stalker, which is where the main source of action and drama is supposed to come from.
This movie does for feminism what “Birth of a Nation” did for equal rights. Christian Grey is a controlling misogynist who constantly berates and abuses his wife. He is an insufferable character who is not deserving of his wife Ana. As Ana was constantly abused in this movie, whether by her husband or by her stalker (who lacks any motivation for stalking her), I ended up cheering for her to divorce Christian, which, SPOILER, did not happen.
The single enjoyable moment was early in the “film,” where Ana confronts the architect of the house that she and Christian are constructing and gives the architect a piece of her mind. This scene was genuinely amusing and was quite laughable for its over-acting.
Of the many issues that arise in this movie, the most glaring is a problem that has been plaguing this franchise since the first film Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson can’t act and share absolutely no chemistry at all. Their dialogue in this movie is second in terrible quality only to “The Room”: no one actually talks like the characters in this movie. Their inability to act, coupled with the deplorable dialogue, was responsible for an immense amount of unintended laughter.
In one scene, Christian Grey, who throughout the film has indicated that he does not drink, comes back to his apartment drunk in what may be the worst-acted scene in human history, or at least since Halle Berry tried being Catwoman. He pretends to be drunk in the way that a 10 year-old, who know what drunkenness is, would. I’m sure that a 10 year-old would be much more emotionally invested in any role in comparison to Dornan.
This film is also comparable to “The Room” in that many characters and subplots are introduced with absolutely no transition and have no resolution, though it is not nearly as comical or obvious. That factor truly made this movie miserable, because a movie like “The Room” or “Trolls 2” is so bad that it’s good.  Other than the scene with Ana and the architect, the funniest part of the movie was when around six elderly people walked into the theater and then promptly walked out after the first sex scene. I think they may have been in the wrong theater.
This movie moves the plot through sex, effectively making it porn, with higher production value and an  inferior script. This is where another problem arises. Dornan and Johnson’s acting is only good enough for them to star in porn, which would be preferable compared to this film.
The only positive comment I can make about this movie, other than when Ana tells off the architect, is that it is the last (please, God be the last!) film in this trilogy of barf. With the possible exception of “Pirates of the Caribbean 5” and “The Legend of Hercules,” this may be the worst movie I have ever seen. I can say with full confidence that “Fifty Shades Freed” is a horrible movie that should be avoided at all costs.
0/5 stars