Fifty Shades Darker, the second film adaptation of EL James’s bestselling novels, has been billed as a steamier sequel to 2015’s Fifty Shades of Grey, but reviewers have condemned it as a distinctively unsexy affair.
According to the Independent, Fifty Shades Darker was simply “an ordeal to watch not because of its gothic eroticism but because of its utter blandness.
Robbie Collin, writing for the Telegraph, had a similar complaint, though he gave the film a comparably generous two stars.
For the New Yorker, the film was offensive not for overtly sexual content but for the reductive way it portrayed the male and female relationship in the film.