Fifty Shades Darker

I didn't see "Fifty Shades of Grey". Nor have I read the book. Nor have I any intention of ever doing so. I am, however, pop-culture aware enough to know the basics of the novelistic romance sensation of the last decade - which seems to have given BDSM some bonus publicity.

As someone who does know a couple of people who practice BDSM and talk about it, it pretty soon becomes clear that, like most people talking about themselves and their own hobbies, this can very quickly become kinda laboriously complicated and a tad dull. I must admit I was hoping for some grand melodrama in among the panting and spanking, but this isn't quite that. I gather the first movie ended with a disruption in the relationship as he went too far on the spanking, and she left, but they get back together in this one pretty quickly with only the slightest of reservations. Instead, we are left with the question "can a nice average girl love a handsome massively loaded but-only-vaguely-defined-what-he-actually-does billionaire who happens to have a few troubling psychological problems", and the answer is, largely, sure, why not. There's only one moment in the entire film where Christian's "dark side" comes across as more than just a described attribute, and given the film largely sets up a lot of complications only to dismiss them pretty quickly as nothing much to worry about, we're never in much suspense as to where this is going. Three separate baddies are introduced only to peter off into nothingness - Kim Basinger, most prominently, only has two scenes of being mildly snide before she's told off by everybody and dismissed from the movie. Dakota Johnson as our heroine at least has a light touch - while her character is largely an underwritten doormat, set up to offer mild objections before ultimately deciding to continue drifting along with Christian, she has a pleasant quality that leads me to hope she ends up in a better movie sometime. Jamie Dorman isn't as fortunate, given he's meant to be the irresistible source of romantic complication and instead seems like a perfectly nice chap who's just a bit weird sometimes.

Long-term Hollywood regular James Foley directs, and given he's male, not surprisingly the sex scenes tend to have Dorman keeping his pants on for as long as possible (Johnson's nipples, however, are regular guest stars). It's lush but empty soap opera that presumably looks nice to fans of the novels while never really drawing in anybody who is immune to their fascinations. I surprisingly did not hate this or find it ludicrous, but I can't say this is something people should rush to see either.