Fifty Shades Freed

r96sk 6/4/2025 2:03:18PM 8.4

<em>'Fifty Shades Freed'</em> is the most boring of the trilogy, even if it probably is a tiny bit better than the original (no. 2 is minorly superior). I am embarrassed to admit that it gave me some goosebumps at the end, I'm such a simp for a montage, I'm afraid; Ellie Goulding's song helped, admittedly. There isn't much to note about this, at least in terms of being unique from the two movies that proceeded - very much a copy-and-paste job. I still like Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, without whom I'd likely be rating this film down in the depths alongside the presumed majority. I did wonder, before and after seeing the first flick, how they managed to stretch this out across three productions. Having now seen them all, I can see they just barely managed to do so. This third release is pretty pointless, they've could've fit all this into a small chunk at the end of #2. Crazy how these films made a billion at the box office. Turns out sex does indeed sell.

CinemaSerf 3/13/2026 2:28:34PM 8.4

For my money, this might actually be the best of this titivating trilogy - if only because they have actually had a go at telling a story. “Christian” (Jamie Dornan) and “Ana” (Dakota Johnson) are looking forward to their nuptials but the disgruntled “Jack” (Eric Johnson) has still not forgotten that she got him fired and then took his job at the publishers. When he manages to enter their luxury apartment and hold her at knife point, she is terrified but also intrigued and once she’s been released by her hunky security chap “Sawyer” (Brant Daugherty) starts to wonder if there aren’t even more secrets in her fiancé’s red leather room - or conceivably in their large larder fridge after dark. Uncharacteristically, she is no longer satiated by whips and/of ice cream in the nether regions and after some borderline melodrama we discover that not only does he, indeed, have a secret but that “Jack” and he have a score to settle that “Christian” isn’t even aware of until a nerve-wracking ending! Well no, not really nerve-wracking but given the other films didn’t even awaken your nerves at all, then this was at least progress. Moreover, in this film someone also told Dornan to get his kit off more often and so there is a bit more ass-candy in their admittedly far fewer sex scenes - an indictment of marriage, perhaps? The acting is all the stuff of “90210” with nice houses, cars, posh frocks but this one even has a car chase and though it’s still pretty terrible, it’s not the shocker the last one (2017) was.

daniel_carr 1/13/2026 7:48:08PM 8.4

I watched Fifty Shades of Grey, maybe it was just because I was getting to know that world for the first time. Or maybe Hollywood really has lost it's best writers but these latest movies are just missing something ...