I went to the movies with my friend and we saw Fifty Shades Darker. The reason we did was because La La Land, which we both wanted to see, wasn’t playing, even though it’s been nominated for 750 Oscars. She and I survived the original Fifty Shades of Grey film, so we agreed movies are all about the popcorn anyway and why not.
In a key move, I ordered a small popcorn like her, when I normally order a medium since it seems like a better deal. But half the popcorn gets wasted! So after picking up the small, I mixed my usual half-Diet Coke/half-Cherry Coke (in layers) and grabbed my typical box of Sno-Caps. I like to mix Sno-Caps in with my popcorn; if you’ve never done it, try it, but not if the popcorn is too hot, because if the Sno-Caps melt all over the place and gob up all the popcorn, it’s a real mess. I mean, a delicious mess, so get extra napkins just in case.
I had low expectations for Fifty Shades, and wasn’t disappointed, but it was Saturday afternoon, the theater was empty because everyone already heard it sucked, and we were just happy to have a few hours off from weekend mom duties. I later looked and found that the film received a 9% Rotten Tomatoes score on the Tomatometer, which seems to mean only eight percent of movies in the history of the world are worse. Not surprised.
In Variety’s review of the “just sexy enough to frighten a few frigid horses” not-even-hardly soft-core porn movie, film critic Guy Lodge skillfully provides a plot summary for those of you who may not a) recall the sequel in the trilogy b) have zero plans to see the film or (most likely for the majority of you who) c) don’t give a shit:
“For all her earlier skittishness, it takes but one fancy dinner and some selfless cunnilingus for Anastasia to admit that she’s ready to return to the Grey side. It’s not long before he’s authoritatively popping vaginal beads inside her person, whisking her off to masked balls (not his own) and forbidding her to go on work trips with her smarmily dashing new boss because “he wants what’s mine.”
Oh, geez, well needless to say in an allegedly-BDSM-themed movie (wherein we see the “red room of pain” for exactly one lame scene where he leaves leather handcuffs on for a minute and then takes them off), control is going to be an issue. Lipstick lines are drawn on Grey’s sandy chest and later erased, dominance and submission become a barely-addressed thing of the past, and I silently swear to leather whips to avoid the third film because seriously no one cares what they name their damn children.
So it turns out that if you dump the whole box of Sno-Caps down the center of the small popcorn, creating a sort of candy core, it works out 10 times better than my previous method of sort of scattering them into a medium popcorn bag willy-nilly. I mean you can’t find them in that oversized bag, you’re digging around the whole time while you’re watching the movie, and you probably end up losing half the box of Sno-Caps to the bottom of the bag while you’re doing that. What a waste.
Needless to say I was watching the film; it’s not that complicated of a story. Girl met billionaire in last film, didn’t like the rough stuff, says goodbye at end but now gives him another chance (cue vanilla sex scene) because hello, hot billionaire (cue more vanilla sex scenes).
In his review accurately pointing out that the first film was better-directed mild erotica for straight women and gay men while this one, with its endless gratuitous naked-boob shots of Dakota Johnson, seems geared for “dirty old men,” Salon’s critic Gary Kramer delivers this spoiler: “In what may be the sexiest moment in Fifty Shades Darker, Christian gets out of bed and transfers a large sum of money into her bank account while completely naked!”
So I watched, but was just mainly just happy with the fact that I was able to achieve the perfect popcorn-to-Sno-Cap ratio, and will stick with that movie-concession recipe for all future films.