‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Whipped By Critics As ‘Pulse-Poundingly Bad’
[...] the sequel to “Fifty Shades of Grey” has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 10 percent, with only two positive reviews posted Thursday morning.
Critics have ripped the movie for having a dull, repetitive plot that fails to generate any heat despite the presence of its lead actress, Dakota Johnson, as well as having “Glengarry Glen Ross” director James Foley in charge of the project.
TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde said “Darker” is filled with nothing but “banalities, bromides and blank stares,” adding that it “plays like an un-asked-for collaboration between the Hallmark and Playboy Channels.”
An abusive-relationship fantasy about a wide-eyed young innocent and the handsome billionaire who yearns to smack her, this sequel manages the neat trick of being more explicit yet less erotic and far goofier than 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
A cinematic soap opera series as sexy and stimulating as laundry detergent, and featuring far less friction, this painfully soporific sensual sequel somehow becomes even less enticing and rousing than Sam Taylor-Johnson’s tediously compromised original.
The production dances around such incredible ugliness, preferring to showcase Christian as a suave man who enjoys slipping steel balls into his lover’s vagina, sends vaguely threatening text messages without provocation, digitally pleasures his partner in a full elevator, and performs oral sex on Ana whenever he can.