Golden Backbone : Fifty Shades Darker Film Review

I saw the first Fifty Shades of Grey film when I’d had a few drinks. (They didn’t help make it any better) I thought that the film-makers had done a not too bad a job, given the source material and the fact that EL James apparently hung around the set like David Brent at the Wernham Hogg Christmas party after he’d been sacked.

This week, on a appropriately windy afternoon, I went to see Fifty Shades Darker.

James’ husband Niall Leonard takes the reins on the Fifty Shades Darker screenplay (I am sure there is a BDSM related joke in there somewhere, but alas today I feel like a bear shat in my head and can’t think of one. Who says that booze kills brain cells?) and James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross) takes Sam Taylor-Johnson’s still warm spot in the director’s chair.

The film naturally follows the ‘plot’ of the book closely, and opens straight in to the aftermath of Ana’s break-up from Christian. Luckily the film spares us the book’s over-the-top grief fest and we’re not subjected to Ana moping around in PJs and snot-crying because she broke up with an abusive fucktard that she’d only been seeing for a couple of weeks.

Ana goes to Jose’s photography exhibition (remember him? The token ethnic guy from the first book that tries to kiss Ana?) and she finds out he’s creepily taken black and white circa 1992 Calvin Klein advert style snapshots of her. (Because everyone loves Ana!) Christian BUYS ALL OF THEM and instead of thinking, ‘fuck this shit, the next step is waking up in a box with all my limbs removed,’ like a normal person would, Ana agrees to go for dinner with him.

Then they get back together, the end. NO WAIT I’M FUCKING WITH YOU, THERE’S STILL AN HOUR AND A HALF TO GO.

Ana gets a job at a publishing company, SIP, as assistant to Fiction Editor Jack Hyde. Mawah ha ha haaaa. I did the Mawah ha ha’s as Jack Hyde is such an obviously villainous name and EL James likes to smack you about the head with FORESHADOWING. At the end of the film, we see Jack in a leather jacket, smoking and looking moody. Ooohh, do you think he might be a baddie? Props to Eric Johnson, though, for not going totally OTT with the villainy and playing Jack Hyde as that creepy guy that seems kind of off in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. Like all the other characters in this hot mess, he has some truly bad lines to say and that’s not his fault.

After Jack attempts to sexually assault Ana, he’s fired. While Christian’s bid to buy SIP is still not finalised, he ‘knows the CEO’ and so he’s able to get Jack sacked without so much as a formal investigation by HR.

'I'm a baddie. Case you couldn't tell.'

In a story that’s already stretching plausibility to snapping point, Ana is given Jack’s job, and her own assistant, who is confusingly called Hannah. In the book, Ana likes Hannah because she’s black and not a threat to her relationship with Christ-pain, and because EL James has to inelegantly shoe-horn in efnics to prove she’s all up on her equality and diversity stuff. (she still hates blonde haired gals, though. Was she wronged by a blonde woman once? I need to know.)

We also meet Mrs Robinson (Kim Basinger – blonde!) the woman who groomed a 15-year-old Christian and introduced him to ‘BDSM’ (it’s going in the quote marks because it’s not BDSM) She has an issue with Ana, because all blonde women hate Ana. Despite Mrs R (her name’s actually Elena) being pivotal to Christian’s backstory, she’s a bit of a McGuffin in this story, essentially appearing solely for the purpose of a Dynasty style show-down between her and Ana before she vanishes, like a cougar performing a magic trick.

This is also true of Christian’s mad, sad, ex Leila. It’s kind of confusing when whole the plot hangs on characters that appear, do their thing, then disappear. Poor Leila is driven mad by Christian’s rejection and her husband’s death and she follows Ana around, waving her bloodied and bandaged wrists at her, calling Christian ‘Master’, in the manner of Dobby from Harry Potter.

Dobby loves Harry Potter

We also finally get to meet Mrs Jones, Christian’s housekeeper. Mrs Jones is probably my favourite 50 Shades character. That woman is a SAINT, cleaning the Red Room of pain, washing ben wa balls and turning a blind eye to the kinky fuckery that’s going on the bedroom while she’s doing the dishes. I’m hoping someone out there is writing Mrs Jones / Taylor fan-fic, because that I’d like to read.

The editing on this film is all over the place. I don’t know if this is because the film follows the book so tightly, and the editing on the book is also a shitty mess, but it’s honestly terrible. We cut from a late-night text conversation between Ana and Christian to a plane crash. I’ll repeat in case you didn’t hear the first time. A plane crash. The shift in tone – from romance to high peril is so swift, it’s jarring.

Hilariously, Christian’s plane crash is on the news, because everyone worries about where rich business men are when they go missing for a few hours, and there’s a tense few minutes (just kidding, it’s about as tense an episode of Peppa Pig. That bit with the little baby lizards and the racing snakes in Planet Earth II was tenser) when we wait - and hope - to find out if Christian has died in the plane crash. Sadly, no he hasn’t.

I expect you want to know about the sex. Tell us about the sex, Parker, I hear you say. Was that at least good? Er….. those who know me well, will know I am the sort of perv that likes watching Youtube videos of Jake Gyllenhaal working out. The sex scenes in this film left my lady-boner as flat as a month old glass of Coke.

1) Christian keeps his trousers on for 95% of the sex scenes. That’s not only unrealistic, but also an appalling waste of Jamie Dornan’s fine booty and spectacular back. We see him naked when he’s working out, which is a lot, but not when he’s boffing Ana.

2) They are tame, tame, tame. They might start off in a more adventurous position, but just when it’s getting interesting, he turns Ana onto her back and it’s good old missionary, fish pie for supper and Newsnight before bed (thanks Peep Show)

3) The spreader bar. I am assuming that’s what this contraption is called. It’s basically an adjustable bar with ankle straps at either end. Christian is using it on Ana - she’s face down – and then he flips her over. The other 8 people in the cinema collectively went, ‘Eeeee!’ probably imagining, like we were, that Christian had just snapped Ana’s spine in several places. On the way out of the cinema, the first thing my friend said was, ‘I wonder how many times they had to rehearse that scene with the bar? Do you think they had to do it a lot?’

There are some intentionally funny moments, but I think this is largely down to the charm of Dakota Johnson, who makes James’ simpering half-wit a little feistier and funnier.

Despite Dornan and Johnson both being fine actors, there is almost no chemistry between them. It seems unfair to compare them to the second most famous on-screen couple of 2017 so far, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land, but thems real sparks flying there, and you’re deeply engaged with Seb and Mia’s relationship in a way you aren’t with Christian and Ana’s.

So that was Fifty Shades Darker, and it actually wasn’t that bad. My ticket was free thanks to my friend having vouchers, so I don’t feel like I stuffed any fivers into the tops of EL James’ stockings. I am just left with the slightest sense of unease that I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to.

Dishonourable Mentions

Consumerist Porn

Boats! Massive apartments! STUFF!

Ana’s magically disappearing bra straps

In the scene where Christian inserts the ben wa balls into Ana’s down there (‘Those are NOT going in my butt!’) Ana is wearing a black basque with straps. Cut to masked ball scene, Ana is in a slinky dress and the bra straps have disappeared. Did they go the same way as the ben wa balls? I don’t know why this bothers me, but it does. She could have just been wearing strapless underwear to start with.