Review of Fifty Shades Freed (2018) by Andrewburge — 15 Nov 2018

In my review for "Fifty Shades Darker" I said: "the reason director James Foley decided to do this [film], was to artificially extend the plot and to make this a trilogy" - and this is partially true. Yet for a film which encourages you not to "miss the climax", it is pretty anticlimactic.

The first hour of the film is as dreary as you can expect. We start with a poorly edited 5-minute intro presented as a slideshow of Christian (Jamie Dornan) and Anastasia's (Dakota Johnson) marriage and their honeymoon all enveloped in a tasteless, generic, simplistic EDM love song. And while the music accompanying this film doesn't get better, at least it eventually stops. Not the same can be said for the aforementioned slideshow, though.

Just like the previous films, this focuses too much on Christian and Anastasia. Even when problems knock at their door, all we are given is a cheesy soap-opera style slideshow of pointless discussions surrounded by so many opulent backdrops that you would think this is an Architectural Digest presentation. The reason why there is such an insistent focus on Christian and Ana's relationship (other than the fact they are the main characters, duh) is because I feel director James Foley is unsatisfied with their chemistry (or lack thereof). But between constant "red room" scenes and bland flirting, there is not much more.

A few scenes did peek my interest though. The scene in which Christian came home drunk after finding that Ana is pregnant offered some really sweet down-to-earth interactions or their first sex scene in which, finally, there was some actual sexual and powerful messages, as Christian asks: "Why do you defy me?"; "Because I can" says Ana as they perform sexual intercourse. This was finally an intimate moment with a bit of naughtiness and insight. Speaking of Ana, Dakota Johnson tries her absolute best to liven up Dornan's empty personality, and it's interesting seeing her transformation to Miss Grey, but she can only do so much.

In the last 30 minutes of the film, we are presented with a bland ransom scene which turns this into an action flick. I don't mind this. Actually, its the best thing in this film because something was happening. But, again, this scene was awfully paced making it really really anticlimactic; not to mention characters like Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) and "Mrs. Robinson" (Kim Basinger) were really wasted.

In the end, this film attempts many things; but for some reason, it shuts them down early with merciless editing and pacing, but as I watched the ending which included a basic montage of the three films I felt a certain closure but also regret seeing an ambition which was cluttered by millennial agendas and too many Audis... what a shame. The steak looked great though, I mean Chirstian loved it and he is not the kind of guy who eats at McDonald's.