Fifty Shades Freed

The Fifty Shades franchise is new to me. I did not see either of the first two in this trilogy of porn for delusional single women who have a lot of cats. I heard there were boobs in them, though, and that made it inevitable that I'd get around to watching at least one in a theater. I'm a sucker for nipples on the big screen.

I felt really fucking weird and self-conscious seeing Fifty Shades Freed alone. Most normal guys would just stay home and watch real porn. So, I talked my buddy Worm into coming with me. But then I felt weird asking for two tickets and the cashier seeing we were two dudes, and Worm refused to wear makeup and a wig.  They sent someone into the theater with a flashlight to make sure we weren't jerking each other off amidst the sea of middle-aged women in Christmas sweaters.

We weren't jerking. At least, I wasn't. I just sat in awe at how fucking stupid, and dull, and sad a spectacle Fifty Shades Freed is. I'm a guy who can get off just watching hot moms making lunches for kids in baloney commercials, yet my balls shriveled early and stayed retracted into my body for the entire 105 minutes. Is this what cat ladies think is sexy? Boring assholes rubbing up against each other in a dimly-lit West Elm catalog? I never thought I'd get bored with tits, but when they're the only perky things in the entire movie, it's pretty fucking easy to get bored. 

Fifty Shades of Grey is about two intensely dull people-assholes, really-with a buttload of money and, well, a black hole where personality should be. Neither Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) nor Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) have any interesting traits. They aren't even human. They're consumption machines, owning a lot of fancy shit: houses, cars, clothes and furniture. It provides them with a clean, modern backdrop upon which to mope.

It opens with them getting married in a glamorous, dewdrop light wedding. This is followed by them arguing about whether they want kids and whether she will take his name. What the fuck? What the hell have they been discussing in all the time before the wedding? Are we supposed to be rooting for these two dimfucks who got married without even knowing this about each other?

Grey apparently has made a fortune, but how he does so is about as clear as it is in the case of Bruce Wayne. Grey isn't even a philanthropist or crimefighter. He's an immature fuck with insecurity issues. He shows no aptitude for anything besides being petty. He pouts in his skyrise, his lakehouse and in Aspen. He proves the old adage that money can't buy happiness. It can, however, buy you softly-lit misery.

Grey is a perfect match for Anastasia because she's got the charm of spoiled milk. Same face most of the time, too. How the fuck can someone this rich have this much baggage, bangs this shitty, and a mouthful of baby teeth? Seriously, Dakota Johnson has tiny teeth with gaps between them. I kept thinking, "shut your weird fucking mouth." At least it's probably easy to floss.

These two are the last people you'd want to see at a party; they'd have absolutely nothing interesting to say, and no life experiences. They'd just tell you about how nice the bidet was in their suite in Paris. Worse, though, is that they live in places that say nothing about them. Their nice houses tell us nothing about them because they were designed and decorated by others. These are just a couple of fuckwits placed against pricey backdrops.

While Grey is employed as a mysterious billionaire, Anastasia is a fiction editor at a publisher whose offices are in a cozy tea shop, and where nobody has a computer. She was promoted while on her honeymoon (neat trick!) and makes big decisions like telling a woman working at a drafting easel to "Make the type two points bigger in the hardcover." I guess she's the boss because she knows only people with poor eyesight buy hardbacks. Since they have no computers, how the fuck will this woman increase the type size from her easel? By calling down to the monks in the basement to write bigger on each copy?

Based on how little skill she shows, and how little she actually works (after coming back from her honeymoon, she admires her new office and has a bunch of sex before Grey whisks her away for a vacation because she "needs a break"), I sensed that Anastasia's job was make-believe, only she didn't know. Her rich husband hired all these people to pretend and decorated an office the way she imagined the publishing world looked. She'd come in and press buttons on a phone and pretend to drink tea with her teddy bear and dolls. Maybe there was a toy cash register in there that went "cha-ching," and she sometimes sold plastic fruit to her "employees." Other days, she could make real cupcakes in this tiny oven that used a lightbulb as the heating element. She did such a good job she got "Good Reader" and "Great job!" ribbons, and she had the most gold stars by her name in the break room.

Grey and Anastasia have a lot of sex, thrown in at intervals that aren't in sync with the minimal plot, just like in real porn! It's supposed to be BDSM shit with handcuffs and a secret sex dungeon. Nobody pees on anyone, though, and nobody gets their chest shit on, spooged across the face, or locked in a dog kennel. In other words, it's pretty fucking vanilla. In one scene, they drip ice cream on each other and lick it off. That is the only scene in which the two of them seem happy. Since they don't smile any other time, I deduce that the ice cream makes them happy, not each other.

The plot, what little of it there is, involves some guy from the past who wants to hurt Grey and Anastasia. He does it arbitrarily, sometimes trying to kidnap, sometimes trying to steal information, occasionally following them at high speed with no purpose. It doesn't build to anything, but all of the sudden right when the movie needs a climax, he kidnaps someone.

After kidnapping Anastasia's friend he tells her to bring him five million dollars right away. I guess because rich people always have that sort of cash lying around. Usually in million-dollar bills, or Kruggerands. He warns her not to tell anyone. So, she doesn't, because she's a dumb asshole. She just goes to the bank and withdraws it; banks do that all the time and it never draws any suspicion.

When she brings the money, alone, to an abandoned warehouse (of course), he slaps her so hard she must be hospitalized. But not before she shoots him in the kneecap. That serves as the culmination of a series of decisions so fucking stupid by her and the filmmakers that it's impossible to root for any of them.

As Anastasia is being wheeled into the hospital on a cart so she can have her slap looked at, Grey tells the medics, "Be careful; she's pregnant." I wonder if there is a version of the script where she wasn't pregnant and he says, "Go ahead drag her down the hall by her hair. It's fine."

Yes, she's carrying Grey's child. At first, he's not happy about that because he thinks it means they won't get to have as much sex. He doesn't want a baby getting in the way of sexy time. And he pouts with all the pout power he can muster. What a catch, Anastasia!!! When he scolds her, she explains to him, in exactly these words: "Babies happen when people have sex. And we tend to do that a lot!" I truly believe that she needed to explain this to him, and maybe to some of the target audience. He doesn't show the intelligence to figure this out on his own.

The good news is her getting slapped really hard makes him realize that he indeed does want a baby, and that they can convert the sex dungeon into a nursery. They just need to put some giraffe and zebra appliques on the quilted red velvet walls. The restraints can be used to keep the baby from crawling away. The butt plugs will be wonderful pacifiers.

Fifty Shades Freed essentially is a mixture of wealth porn and bad erotica, not in any logical order. Much of it goes nowhere, as though there is a horrific four-hour director's cut out there somewhere that follows the lost and uninteresting threads. Grey buys a giant, secluded lake mansion for Ansatasia. They tour it and meet a sexy architect who wants to rebuild it. Then the mansion is forgotten for the rest of the movie. At another point, Anastasia's friend thinks her boyfriend is cheating on her. We never get any indication otherwise, but it's all forgotten when the potential cheater proposes.

I didn't mind these threads being lost because I didn't give a fuck. But neither did the people making this colossal turd. I'm not sure they cared about anything other than butcher block counter tops and product placement for Audi.

There are too many damn shots of Dakota Johnson's boobs. I like boobs, and these are fine examples, but I got bored, especially when they hang from such a shitty, bland actress. What I thought was weird is that there are no dick shots, not even in shadow. Who the fuck is this movie for? Do cat ladies like boobs and not dicks? This movie is clearly meant for the ladies, so why not give them a thrill?

One Finger for Fifty Shades Freed. This movie could use a shitload more one fingers. All of them diddling.