Movie Review: Fifty Shades Freed

With Valentine’s Day just having passed, it’s time to talk about the newest installment in the Fifty Shades series. Fifty Shades Freed is the final film of the trilogy, and is a fitting, merciful ending for the series. Adapted from E.L. James’ best-selling novels, the film series follows Anastasia Steele’s whirlwind romance with a mysterious entrepreneur, Christian Grey. A series
that prides itself on its themes of sexual deviancy, high octane drama and masochism does
nothing at all to disguise itself as a romantic thriller. The movie did not perform well critically,
fielding a 3.7 out of 10 on IMDB, the International Movie Database.

Fifty Shades Freed begins with the wedding of the two main characters, Anastasia and Christian.
The lovers spend much of the first act of the movie in their honeymoon phase, gallivanting
around in France. This is until Anastasia’s former boss, who sexually assaulted her in the
previous film and is currently stalking her, breaks into one of Christian’s offices and blows some
stuff up. Here is where the tangled web of intricacy in the series catches up with itself, only to
tie the entire series in knots. Anastasia returns to her job as an editor at a publishing house,
receiving a promotion upon return. Through some crazy, billionaire string pulling in the
previous films, Christian had gotten Anastasia’s former boss (and wannabe terrorist), Jack, fired.

This means Christian is her boss, and they play around like it’s some funny inside joke that he is
both the boss at work and at home. It was at this point that I gave up on the film and embraced
the experience of how awful it was. Honestly, I am torn between actually going at length to
explain more of the plot synopsis of this film or just continuing to trash it as the pile of
excrement it actually is. I’ll skip to the (MAJOR SPOILER FILLED) reveal the ending gave us.

It turns out that the most inventive and original idea this series produced is about the
equivalent of a daytime, soap opera twist. Jack kidnaps Christian’s sister, was working with
Anastasia’s co-worker Liz AND was raised in the same foster home as Christian was! It turns
out, the reason Jack has been out to get Anastasia and Christian is because he felt left behind
once Christian was adopted by a rich family, ultimately being transformed into a walking,
talking, spank machine. By the end of the two hours the movie stole from me, I felt sapped of
energy, and I was desperately searching for an excuse to leave early. Anyhow, some other
things that happen along the way that are probably noteworthy, if you’re basing this review on
whether you’ll see the movie (may God have mercy on your soul if that’s true): Anastasia and
Christian get married, honeymoon, have sex, eat ice cream, have some more sex, find out
Anastasia’s pregnant, fight a little and thwart a stalker’s plan for…revenge? Something like
that? Honestly, I still don’t know what he was trying to accomplish.

At times you may think, “Wow, this review sure is hard to follow,” or even, “Dang. I can’t keep
up with all of this.” That is basically what this film made me feel, but on steroids. Oh, and by the
way, this movie does very little in the way of promoting gender equality; instead it uses its
message of sexual freedom as a way of expression to justify its poor, dramatic storytelling. All
of Christian’s employees seem to be women, and not once does he treat his wife like anything
other than a blow-up sex doll. The worst part is that she is generally okay with this. Look, this
movie is bad. It is really bad. And even if I remove my bias against the depicted sexual fetishes
and nuances, the movie still blows. I’m almost certain there are just thousands of people out
there who pretend to enjoy this series, and maybe even the books as well. But make no
mistake: it is overdramatic, poorly written and awfully acted. Just don’t watch it. Save some
money, and take your sweetheart out on a real date instead of to this movie.