118 - Fifty Shades Darker

Your Stupid Minds tries a semi-new release before the other big name bad movie podcasts can take a crack at it: Fifty Shades Darker! Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) return per contractual obligation for this needless sequel to the passable first film Fifty Shades of Grey.

Ana and Christian are broken up. And when you break up with someone, it’s important to just move on. Just kidding! You should buy several photographs of her at a public gallery, follow her around and maintain a dossier with her picture and measurements. Luckily this works (when you’re a billionaire), so the lovers reconcile and proceed with progressively kinkier “vanilla” sex.

Unfortunately their disgusting love is tainted by pockets of tension which quickly dissipate, such as a rapist boss with the on-the-nose villain name of Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson), crazy ex-lover Leila (Bella Heathcote), older abuser Elena (Kim Basinger), and third act helicopter malfunction. The movie is mostly Batman Returns at this point, except with Christian being much more manipulative and aloof than Bruce Wayne.