Fifty Shades Freed Movie Review

3/10

“Relax Christian. It’s boobs and boobland.”

Fifty Shades Freed marks the end of yet another ridiculous trilogy that I’ve finished recently (The Purge series being the other). Thankfully, unlike others that have come before it, it’s not pretending to be anything that it’s not, and it does exactly what it’s marketed for: a movie aimed at using the ever original strategy of sex sells. Which it did. Fifty Shades Freed racked up a stupendous $38 million at the box office opening weekend and it’s a fact I’m not even surprised about. My feelings towards the film and the series, in general, haven’t really changed as it’s still the same old erotic drama nonsense that at the very least, makes me laugh.

What I will say about the final chapter that also makes it different to those before it, is the hilarious divergence into a sort of crime/kidnapping thriller. For those only coming to watch the sexy time that’ll happen, don’t fret as you’ll still get bountiful moments like that. What you’ll also receive is a laughable attempt at trying to be something more serious than a “complex” erotic love story and the makings of a thrill-seeking, somehow also car chasing adventure to race against the clock to save a loved one. I’m divulging more details about the plot compared to other reviews because the only aspect I can suggest selling this film for, is to get drunk whilst watching it and laugh at how silly everything gets in this ludicrous story. It feels exactly like the third Hangover movie, where they decided to not reuse the same golden formula from the first two but instead turn it into an adventure heist like film. And we all know how that ended up.

The only other aspect that I mildly enjoyed about the series, was the soundtrack. In my view, Fifty Shades Freed dropped the ball on this outing as I didn’t feel that any of the tracks particularly stood out and they all just kept occurring every 10 minutes. It became ridiculous when the director felt the need to employ a mainstream pop song to transition every scene between settings or to even just continue to throw it over the top of unnecessary montages. If that wasn’t bad enough, I was further bombarded with “erotically” themed songs during the sex scenes which felt stupid to me haha.

At that point, it started to feel like one gigantic music video about a rich billionaire’s life with a wife whom he’s explores bondage with, except it was mostly shit but hilariously bad as well. I also got reminded of the film Suicide Squad which also used a staggering amount of songs in the movie for no real reason aside from selling the soundtrack at the time of its release. Which is an aspect that I’m sure is an intentional marketing ploy used by the Hollywood executives behind Fifty Shades Freed to put forward specific songs from certain artists, just like a radio station that’ll play only mainstream pop hits and Justin Bieber’s “Despacito” on repeat.

But that’s pretty much all I have to say. I don’t really want to give any more attention to a film that is ultimately an easy recommendation to skip and that doesn’t really require anything else to be revealed in terms of what you wouldn’t already expect from the series. I don’t hate the film compared to some of the other terrible films I’ve seen this year and I don’t have any real issues with what it’s all about or is trying to do. It’s a film that uses sex to sell and is just a glorified version of those erotically written romance novels that only housewives go out to read and there’s nothing wrong with that. Aside from the fact that this doesn’t make any of it a great story nor a good film but hey, who cares. It’s Fifty Shades so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into and perhaps at the very least, you could laugh at all of the ridiculousness that will occur. Skip it if you want to actually watch a decent film but see it for the stupidity if you must.