Dakota Johnson has all the appeal of a thumb-sucking Pitiful Pearl doll. Jamie Dornan has stopped shaving his body, but you can still see the scars from the old cigarette burns on his manly chest. Foolishly returning for more critical abuse are James Foley, who directed the idiotic second installment, and scriptwriter Niall Leonard, who writes dialogue that can only be spoken while chewing gum.

The one who is wisely not around for the long haul is Sam Taylor-Johnson, the original female director, who made her money, got hip to artistic ridicule fast, and moved on.

The third time around is supposed to be a merciful finale to all the R-rated nincompoopery, but I know another installment when I smell one. Jack kidnaps Christian’s little sister, Mia, and threatens to kill her unless Ana can come up with five million dollars in cash in two hours! Nothing adds up to anything resembling a trajectory, but to drag out the agony, Ana turns out to be pregnant, much to Christian’s horror. Hyde was last seen attacking and kidnapping Ana in a previous storyline, but now he’s back, out of prison and consumed with revenge. Joining the tedium are several actors locked into iron-clad three-picture studio contracts to play recurring characters like Ana’s best friend, who is having an affair with Christian’s brother, as well as the villainous Jack Hyde, the editor at Ana’s publishing company. Starring: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson and Eloise Mumford Written by: Niall Leonard (screenplay) and E. When things get too dangerous, he whisks her away to his rustic ski lodge in Aspen where they lick a pint of Ben & Jerry’s off each other, discreetly photographed out of frame below the bikini line. Summoned to tie up the assailant with an object of restraint, a female bodyguard shrugs, “I haven’t got anything.” Ana replies, “ We do.” The market audience at the screening I attended went viral with laughter. For proof, there’s the scene when Christian is out-of-town (shopping for another yacht, no doubt) and Ana is threatened by an intruder during a break-in. They’re also still loopy over the ecstasy of whips, chains and exotic lubricants -to the delight of the franchise’s bafflingly large fan base. She’s still happy to straddle him in sports cars and be cuffed to bedposts. For at least ten minutes, it looks like they’ll settle down, but hell, you can’t detain a pair of overpaid, self-indulgent sex addicts very long with a case of coitus interruptus, so it’s back to business as usual. This time he locks up the sex toys and takes her to the altar in Paris, then on a trip in his private jet to a glamorous honeymoon in the South of France.

Trilogy fifty shades of grey