I went into this, my first reviewed movie, having neither seen any previous installments of the 50 Shades franchise, nor read any of the books.
The movie starts with our titular heroes, Anastasia and Christian Grey, getting married in a painfully slow ceremony surrounded by rich dullards, and not much else happens from there. Most of their time is spent arguing with one another, or complaining about married life to other people. They are the most insipidly boring couple in the history of couples. They communicate like children, have easily avoidable arguments by not using human words, and I can’t imagine anyone being able to stand being around them. They spend a lot of time flying around the world to amazing locations to take baths and stare at each other. Sometimes they invite people along. These people are not germane to the plot, and their names need not be noted. One of these people gets kidnapped eventually. Everyone yawns.
In between them arguing and staring, a person that I assume is from the earlier movies is trying to kill Anastasia. Or inconvenience her. He may have been trying to get severance pay after he was fired from where she works? Regardless, this leads to a mid-tempo car chase where somehow a person in an SUV keeps up with an Audi R8. The trailer for the film tried to make this look like 2 Fifty 2 Furious. I was hoping they’d drive off an embankment. Unfortunately, they survive, and have super awkward sex in the car where we learn Christian Grey has about 27 seconds of stamina. I think the whole theater was embarrassed for him. Oh, you want to talk about the terrible sex?
For being a movie that was supposed to be about kink, they have the kind of boring sex you’d expect from the blandest couple on the planet. From my reckoning, risque for them generally means having sex while standing up. I think this was to symbolize how uncomfortable everyone was. There are a lot of whips and chains in the background, and I assume they were for the audience to self-flagellate as punishment for the sin of sitting through the movie. Anastasia Grey starts moaning by simply getting on the bed she’s so intensely turned on by high thread count sheets. Once, the movie flashes a butt plug on screen to show how deviant they are, and my monocle popped out in shock. In one scene where there wasn’t anything going on that a normal adult wouldn’t consider mild foreplay, Anastasia uses a safe word to get him to stop. Maybe this is why he’s so grumpy all the time? In another scene Anastasia puts melted ice cream in Christian’s pubes, and licks it off. “This was not what I meant when I said they were having vanilla sex,” I thought to myself while flinching and looking away.
Christian Grey is a glowering, ever present golum. Silently and persistently, he stalks his wife for no good reason, and to all of ours and Anastasia’s annoyance. He’s Marky Mark in the movie Fear with money. He’s Data from Star Trek’s brother Lore. Remember Lore? Christian talks like an evil android attempting to be human, before getting a divide by zero error.
Much of the dialogue between the two are them alternating between silently staring at each, each mouth slightly agape, or talking breathlessly about nothing. When Christian is not around, he has the world’s worst security team watching her instead. If she’s not nearly being killed under their noses, Anastasia’s giving them the slip with barely any effort.
Anastasia Grey seems clever only in a world where Christian Grey is someone with power.
Fifty Shades Freed Rating: 
