Fifty Shades Darker (2017)

Directed by James Foley. Starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson, Kim Basinger, Marcia Gay Harden, Bella Heathcote, Eloise Mumford, Rita Ora, Luke Grimes, Victor Rasuk, Bruce Altman, Robinne Lee. [R]

Second sexed-up sedative in the Fifty Shades series offers up another lo-o-ong two hours of plot-less relationship drama and heavy breathing, as embarrassingly dubious as it is insipidly tame. The breakup that ended the last chapter wasn’t meant to last, of course, but even if Dornan’s billionaire alpha male stalker wasn’t inappropriate as hell and throwing out red flags like a Communist store on closeout day, he continues to generate zero chemistry with his frumpish blank-slate co-star. Watching their tug-of-war between blissful commitment and brooding jealousies can’t be saved by the bad laughs and steamy rumpy-pumpy, neither of which are in especially high quantities (how did a Fifty Shades movie manage to feel like less of a flesh factory of fornication than the average early episode of “Game of Thrones”?). All of its arty pretensions and slick calculation act as a disservice to its damaged love story since it negates any shallow stabs at character/behavior study that might have been appreciated in Euro markets, and the couple instead becomes an illogical pairing out of a raunchy rom-com (minus real raunch, romance, or intentional comedy); being as pretty as can be just makes the whole thing enormously unattractive. Even the title is a lie, as you’d have to be fifty shades more Ben & Jerry’s vanilla than Johnson’s Ana to find anything here to be dark enough to brag about. Screenplay adaptation by Niall Leonard, husband of writer E. L. James, which is all the warning that’s needed about this thing’s dialogue. The trilogy closes out with Fifty Shades Freed.

13/100