GUEST CRITIC #21: Fifty Shades Darker with Sharon Mulyk

As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me. As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, sometimes a simple sentence or two from a friend says it all. Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy. Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering. In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for quick-hit movie reviews.

TODAY'S CRITIC

Mrs. Sharon Mulyk is no stranger to “Every Movie Has a Lesson.” Six years ago, I was lucky and privileged enough to be her daughter Emily's third grade teacher at Pioneer Elementary School in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Emily and Sharon were two big reasons why that year was my favorite and best year of teaching.

When Sharon is not being a "Brady Bunch" mom, juggling swimming, basketball, volleyball, and football mom to four kiddos, with her husband Jimmy, she loves to travel. By day, Sharon is a family law attorney and an owner/partner of Mulyk, Laho, and Mack LLC serving DuPage County. On her nights and weekends, she transforms to a pushy and belligerent die-hard Green Bay Packers. Somehow, just as it was two year ago, I feel worse for her Bears fan husband Jim each and every day than I do for Anastasia Steele herself.

Two years ago, Sharon Mulyk graced this website with her guest review of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and we were all made better people for it. I couldn’t let the sequel come around without inviting her back for “Fifty Shades Darker.” Enjoy!

HER REVIEW

"Fifty Shades Darker?” HA! “Fifty Shades Dumber” is more like it. After seeing the sequel, I feel like I was duped. The first movie was so spot on with the book and was what I called a “great love story” with the sex being “just incidental to that love story.” Fast forward two years and we now have a horrible story of two lovers learning to trust each other with randomly placed gratuitous sex scenes. The chemistry between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan was lacking. Johnson couldn’t decide if she was a strong independent woman who wasn’t going to be a slave to her lover’s rules, or if she was submissive to the core. The “I’m a strong woman” bleed into whimpering “I need to be taken care of” way too much and often in the same scene. Dornan was…wait, was he in the movie? That’s how forgettable his performance was.
There was way too much going on in this film which made the film feel rushed and the acting amateurish. Save your money, wait for the Redbox, put the kids to bed and enjoy the four minutes of gratuitous sex, because that is about the best your gonna get from this film.
Now, in fairness, after laughing my way through this movie, I did recall that I was not a fan of the second book either. So, I guess there is hope for the third movie."

CONCLUSION

I'd like to thank Sharon for her second “Guest Critic” review! I’m pretty sure she needs to return in two years for the final chapter of the trilogy and hammer that last nail in the coffin. Thanks for playing along and coming back to the website!

As I always ask, let's keep this going. Friends, if you see a movie that I don't see and want to be featured on my website (and get a fun fake biography written about you), hit up my website's Facebook page and you can be my next GUEST CRITIC!