Fifty shades of cringy

The second installment of the trilogy, “Fifty Shades Darker,” hit US theatres February 10, 2017 and since then has grossed $377 million worldwide. The movie stars Jamie Dornan as the mysterious and brooding Christian Grey, and Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele, the good girl who will change him.

Opinions on the movie/novel franchise “Fifty Shades of Grey” range anywhere from “YASSSS QUEENNNNN” to “Ew gross get that as far away from me as possible” and while I am by no means a super fan, I do thoroughly enjoy the books and the movies. However, I will not hesitate to acknowledge the less admirable things about the franchise such as the less than below average writing style of author E.L. James, and the terrible acting ability of Dakota Johnson.

The movie begins where the first one ended, Christian and Ana have broken up and Ana is on to bigger and better things. She has recently gotten a new job at a publishing company in Seattle and has a super creepy boss who definitely wants to sleep with her, but she shows little interest in him because Christian is consuming her every waking thought.

As the movie progresses, Christian and Ana rekindle their romance and agree on a “no rules or stipulations” relationship, referring to his sexually dominant tendencies. There are twists and turns around every corner, admittedly predictable, but the effort was obvious and I can appreciate that.

To be perfectly frank, I found the plot of this movie pretty compelling. So much so that it would take an entire page of writing to accurately lay out the plot and give a synopsis of the movie itself. The plot is not where the movie fell short.

For me, the worst part of the entire movie was the cringy and ill-timed sex scenes. Sex is a part of life, there is no denying that, and the sex itself I didn’t have a problem with. It was the overly produced and manufactured sex scenes that I had a problem with. Throughout the movie, there were large chunks of good, quality storytelling and plot development and all of a sudden: BOOM! huge unnecessary sex scene that does nothing to develop the plot.

Now I know this book series is part of the erotic genre, and cringy sex scenes are what make money, I just would have been more accepting of them had them been well-executed.

Since the release of the movie, I have seen it twice and each time I have enjoyed it more. Dakota Johnson has yet to impress me in anything she has been in, however I have high hopes for the final installment of the trilogy which is set to be released February 8, 2018.