Fifty Shades Darker reviews round-up: All the most brutal takes on the kinky sequel

'The only conviction the two stars bring to their roles comes in their mutual awkwardness and eye-rolls that suggest going down on each other is an endurance test they can't wait to be over'

This will surprise precisely no one, but Fifty Shades Darker hasn't been well-received by critics.

Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't exactly warmly received either, but the involvement of director Sam Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel at least gave the film some glimmer of a creative sheen; with that duo gone, it looks as if all hell has broken loose on the kinky sequel.

The film is currently sitting on a pitiful 8% on Rotten Tomatoes, lambasted by the vast majority of critics for daring to insistently label itself as a kink-fest, and then barely delivering the Table of Contents of BDSM.

Here's what the critics had to say:

The Independent - Geoffrey Macnab - 1/5

Fifty Shades Darker is an ordeal to watch not because of its gothic eroticism but because of its utter blandness.

The Guardian - Catherine Shoard - 1/5

Spliced between such drama come the sex scenes, steamy as a greasy spoon and almost as erotic. Fifty Shades’s chief way of proving how dirty it is seems to be making its stars take endless showers – which inevitably leads to more sex, and so a terrible cycle of shagging and washing.

Rolling Stone - Peter Travers - 1/2/5

But the only conviction the two stars bring to their roles comes in their mutual awkwardness and eye-rolls that suggest going down on each other is an endurance test they can't wait to be over. (Will Arnett and Rosario Dawson generate more erotic heat in The Lego Batman Movie. And they're made of plastic.)

Ana calls Christian's desires "kinky f*ckery," but where the hell is it? Confronted with Christian's Red Room of Pain, Ana can only gaze at the array of whips and chains and wonder, "Does the maid dust in here?" This softcore swill is hardcore awful.

The Telegraph - Robbie Collin - 2/5

There’s a wine-tossing, face-slapping, cocktail party showdown here that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Dynasty, and a masked ball so heavy on chintz and cheese and coloured spotlights, you keep expecting Jim Carrey’s Riddler to burst through the window and announce that he’s poisoned the vol-au-vents.

The New York Times - Manohla Dargis

There’s not much else to say except that the all-media screening of “Fifty Shades Darker” I attended had scarcely begun before it turned into a live edition of the TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” At least some of the few hundred moviegoers seem to have arrived with modest expectations; others had seen “Fifty Shades of Grey,” so presumably knew better.

Soon, though, the individual scattered titters and excited murmurings began to shift and to harmonize as skeptics and true believers alike became as one, joined by the display of so much awfulness. Afterward, we lit cigarettes and murmured about what fun we had even though we also agreed that we could never go there again.

Toronto Sun - Liz Braun - 2/5

Not to put too fine a point on this or anything, but Fifty Shades Darker, sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, is very boring. Very, very boring. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, boring, actually.

The Playlist - Will Ashton

A cinematic soap opera series as sexy and stimulating as laundry detergent, and featuring far less friction, this painfully soporific sensual sequel somehow becomes even less enticing and rousing than Sam Taylor-Johnson’s tediously compromised original. Actively dull and astoundingly flaccid, the monotonously dreary, everlastingly humdrum BDSM fan fiction franchise can never quite decide if it’d rather be smutty or classy.

Fifty Shades Darker is out now.