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Fifty Shades Dumber

............You know what? I'm just going to throw this line out there for everyone to hear:

Anastasia: "Here I am, trying to be all romantic and you're distracting me with your kinky fuckery."

In the five years that I've been reviewing movies for this site, I've never come across any line in any movie this jaw-droppingly stupid. This line came out of Anastasia Steele's mouth post-coitus when Christian Grey began probing her belly button with his tongue. There was no reason for her, or the writers, to commit to that sentence! And yet, somehow, Fifty Shades Darker seems to sink lower from there. This sequel to 2015's snorefest picks up....I don't know, days after Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) leaves Mr. Grey (Jamie Dornam) for being "fifty shades of fucked up"? Being the creepy, abusive and aggressive stalker he is, our rich prick wants her back, but this time, he wants a normal, vanilla relationship. Okay, not really because he still loses his shit when she goes on business trips with someone that isn't him; he inserts himself into his girlfriend's personal and professional life whenever he gets the chance (Ana now work for a publishing firm who has the brilliant idea of making eBooks popular - just like E.L. James and her Fifty Shades of Grey series!), and he still gets his rocks off by shoving beads in her twat just before they go to masquerade ball. Did I mention this fucker marks up his torso as 'safe zones' to where his lover can't touch him? It's told that his father was abusive towards him when he was young, but that still doesn't make up for the fact that our lead acts like a total asshole thought the film!

This is going to be a rather short review, because in this sequel, outside of Christian and Ana resuming their relationship, nothing of interest happens to make me give a shit about this movie. There are subplots, like Anastasia being stalked by one of Christian's former submissives, Grey's teacher in kinky sex (Kim Basinger, cashing in her check) trying to win him back for some un-clarified reason, Ana's boss, Jack (Eric Johnson) trying to out-do Christian in being a creepy dickbag, but these feel forced into a main plot that would be 90 minutes long instead of 2 hours and 11 minutes! As for the sex scenes - I'll just say this: there's a better movie based on this kind of material called The Submission of Emma Marx. The acting is a bit better, there's more of a spark between adult performers Penny Pax and Richie Calhoun and, most importantly, there is a mutual respect for the boundaries Emma puts in place, as well as each other. Bottom line: when an adult film is better than a prominent Hollywood blockbuster, you seriously messed up.

0 stars out of ****
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