50 Shades Weaker: 'Grey' Sequel Is Generic, Witless & Oh So Vanilla

fifty shades darker

There’s a scene in Fifty Shades Darker where titularly-punning billionaire sadist Christian Grey (played, if we’re to call it that, by a contractually-obliged, barely-awake Jamie Dornan), goes down in a fiery helicopter crash, somewhere in the snowy, mountainous wilds of Oregon or Washington. As the helicopter plummets to Earth, his faithful corporate off-sider (Robinne Lee) continually yells out “Christian, what’s happening?”, showing that, in the 50 Shades world, women are: a) witless; b) deferent; and c) forever waiting for a man to save them.

And save her he does. Somehow. It’s never explained how. After a single scene where “romantic” heroine Dakota Johnson —in a performance so bad she somehow dips into the uncanny valley— and assorted non-essential characters sit around watching the ‘billionaire’s helicopter goes missing’ news reports, Dornan strides back in through the door, a slight smear of blood artfully swabbed across his brow, tells everyone he’s fine, and so they all leave him alone with his girl for some hot post-helicopter-crash shower-coitus.

When confronted with someone who had just been in a helicopter crash, you might think to ask: what happened? Did everyone else survive? How did you survive in the wintry wilderness in only light business-casual clothes? Did you just walk all the way back from the snowy mountains to downtown Seattle? Did you not think to maybe make a phone-call? Have you been to hospital? Have you talked to the police? To the press? Will there be an aviation inquiry into the accident?

No one asks these questions in Fifty Shades Darker. Nor questions any of the utter idiocy of the narrative. Why so many questions, anyway? Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Just go along for the ride! Herein, the ride ricochets from moments of tepid suburban soft-core to ridiculous instances of hysterical, nonsensical drama.

Scenes like ye olde helicopter crashe happen, are quickly resolved, and then never spoken about again. It’s the stuff of rote, ridiculous soap-opera; back-from-the-deadness handled with the blitheness of Neighbours’ Dee comeback. Whilst the flick opens with grainy dream-sequence flashbacks to Dornan’s abused childhood, no one seems concerned that a near-death experience in a helicopter crash might leave psychological scars.

In another sublimely-idiotic moment, poor Bella Heathcote, playing a bug-eyed crazy ex-girlfriend, shows up in Johnson’s apartment with a gun, before the attractive billionaire again saves the day, this time with his mystical dom super-powers of Stockholm Syndrome slave-makin’. Having just stared death in the face, Johnson dares to take a sad-times montage stroll all by herself, walking through the rainy streets to a torturous Sia piano ballad. When she gets home, Dornan yells at her, because he cares. Actual dialogue: ANASTASIA STEELE (lulz): “She scared me… but you scared me more!”

Johnson would be right to be scared of Dornan, a terrifying sociopath who advances the abusive relationship introduced in the first film. There’s less stalking this time, but he has her followed by a PI and keeps this surveillance dossier on hand, tracks all the activity from the phone he gave her, keeps plying her with money that she refuses, and says romantic things like “do as you’re told!” and “you can either walk or I’ll carry you!” and “he wants what’s mine!”

The latter is said w/r/t what yr old pal Wikipedia calls “Christian’s romantic rival”, Johnson’s boss at her publisher. Given he’s played by The Knick’s Dr. Gallinger (Eric Johnson), there’s little doubt that he’s going to be a creep; going from workplace-flirt to leering sex-pest in the blink of an eye. His aggressive, rapey sexual entreaties are seen as horrible due to the fact that’s he’s only a handsome urban professional, not a handsome billionaire; and, so, he gets kneed in the balls, and then fired. Not via HR due process, but by Dornan, who’s bought the company his gal works for so as to “protect” her. He then has said gal installed in her old boss’s job, because romance.

This, gladly, leads to the film’s one true moment of high camp hilarity, with a final shot of a bag-eyed, unshaven, cig-smokin’ Dr. Gallinger sneering at the Grey family estate and its big-celebratory-finale fireworks, then burning a hole through a photo of Dornan’s face; having taken a full heel turn, now resembling some cod action-movie villain. The way the ex-boss and Kim Basinger’s ‘Mrs. Robinson’ figure are turned into cut-out antagonists —with foreshadowing of future films— shows the need to gin up some drama; random helicopter crashes inserted into the plot because there’s no conflict in the central relationship.

Where 2015’s Fifty Shades Of Grey was a fantasy about a regular-girl being wooed by a super-hot billionaire, Fifty Shades Darker is a different kind of female fantasy: that if a man loves you’ll, he’ll change. And, so, to ‘keep’ Johnson —and she is kept— Dornan pledges that his days of psycho-sexual sadism are over, that he now wants to be only a regular supportive lover. And, so, he goes vanilla, so vanilla that (gasp! (spoilerz, I guess, but, shit, really? Don’t watch this film, let alone care about it)) eventually he proposes to her. There’s flowers and fireworks and a lavish party and all the wealth-porn you can hope for; Johnson saying ‘yes’ to a life of 1%er decadence interspersed with tepid suburban erotica.

The moral of the last film was that it was okay to fuck a terrifying stalker if he’s a handsome billionaire. The moral, this time around, is that mildly-kinky sex is okay if it’s within the bounds of marriage. It’s all pitched as romance, peddling the kind of generic idiocy populated supermarket-checkout pulp romance novels eternal. But, again, the upshot is terrifying.

Director James Foley seems to have gotten the gig, here, due to his work on the forgotten 1996 psycho-thriller Fear, in which Reese Witherspoon dates a psycho Mark Wahlberg. Here, instead of merely dating a psycho, our heroine decides to shack up with him 4evz. Because, ladies, if the man you’re dating is controlling, obsessive, abusive, jealous, distrusting, dominating, and forever using his power and wealth to get what he wants, then the best thing to do is to get married ASAP.