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Featuring a blowzy, winningly inept size-12 heroine,Bridget Jones's Diaryis a fetching adaptation of Helen Fielding's runaway bestseller, grittier thanAlly McBealbut sweeter thanSex and the City. The normally sylphlike Renée Zellweger (Nurse Betty,Me, Myself and Irene) wolfed pasta to gain poundage to play "singleton" Bridget, a London-based publicist who divides her free time between binge eating in front of the TV, downing Chardonnay with her friends, and updating the diary in which she records her negligible weight fluctuations and romantic misadventures of the year. Things start off badly at Christmas when her mother tries to set her up with seemingly standoffish lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), whom Bridget accidentally overhears dissing her. Instead she embarks on a disastrous liaison with her raffish boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant, infinitely more likeable when he's playing a baddie instead of his patented tongue-tied fops). Eventually, Bridget comes to wonder if she's let her pride prejudice her against the surprisingly attractive Mr. Darcy.
If the plot sounds familiar, that's because Fielding's novel was itself a retelling of Jane Austen'sPride and Prejudice, whose romantic male lead is also named Mr. Darcy. An extra ironic poke in the ribs is added by the casting of Firth, who played Austen's haughty hero in the acclaimed BBC adaptation of Austen's novel. First-time director Sharon Maguire directs with confident comic zest, while Zellweger twinkles charmingly, fearlessly baring her cellulite and pulling off a spot-on English accent. LikeFour Weddings and a FuneralandNotting Hill(both of which were written by this film's coscreenwriter, Richard Curtis),Bridget Jones's stock-in-trade is a very English self-deprecating sense of humor, a mild suspicion of Americans (especially if they're thin and successful), and a subtly expressed analysis of thirtysomething fears about growing up and becoming a "smug married." The whole is, as Bridget would say, v. good.--Leslie Felperin
I'm not understanding the phenom - maybe the book is better? I haven't read the book, but cannot understand the wild popularity of Bridget Jones based on the movie. I'm all for a movie that champions a "regular girl" but the movie version of Bridget? She has the luck of landing great jobs in competitive fields for which she's totally unqualified and inept, she's alcoholic and her vocabulary rivals that of an uneducated hooker. She doesn't try to educate herself or prepare properly for her jobs; she just wants to lose a few pounds and grab her guy. And yet, one of the sharpest legal minds in the country finds her fascinating? Uh huh.
BTW, how Fielding had the guts and thought to pull in even tongue-in-cheek references to Pride and Prejudice is beyond me. This has absolutely nothing to do with P&P. Bridget is the antithesis of Elizabeth Bennett.
Zellweger actually looks better at he more normal Bridget weight, but she is by no means an overweight Bridget. She does her usual cute mugging for the camera and can handle a semi-decent British accent. I just wish she had made the character a more sympathetic and likable.
I actually was put off by the language in the film, something that rarely happens when I watch a movie. I'm not offended by swearing in films, but soooo many repetitions of the "F" word--of ANY word-- starts getting ridiculous and annoying. The movie tries too hard to cram in edgy "adult" humor that actually comes off as painfully juvenile and boring. It takes away from the film and from Bridget herself. She winds up looking like a simpleton who keeps her mind constantly in the gutter.
The only scene I found funny in the whole film was the fight scene. I'll give a star to that. It was amusing. Most of the movie, however, just kept me rolling my eyes and yawning. And wanting to tell Bridget to go to AA and enroll in a college course. And wanting to tell Darcy to cut and RUN before it's too late and he winds up with a Bridget who is a few years from turning into her bore of a mother.
I'm not charmed.
Beware the screenwriters Lestat! There really ought to be a law against screenwriters who suck the life out of literary characters. If there were, the culprits behind the screenplay for "Bridget Jones's Diary" would be languishing in the deepest, foulest crud-filled dungeon holes imaginable. Helen Fielding, one of the three screenwriters, must have been held captive and tortured. Only that would explain her participation in this literary travesty.
To have transformed Bridgett's mother -- narcissistic, flighty and imperturbable - into a weepy, sad little housewife is incomprehensible, never mind unforgivable. To give Daniel Cleaver - unrepentant rogue and scoundrel - any hint of sympathy is idiotic and wrong. To add a fight scene - complete with a plunge through a plate glass window! - is positively imbecilic. This is London, sod it, not the bloody Wild West!
And poor Bridget, denuded of her obsessive charm, her wry perceptiveness and her fascination with pop culture...shocking!
The result is a bleached out, watered down and thoroughly stomach-churning translation of a cast of funny, silly and thoroughly contemporary characters into the blandest and most tepid of leftover puddings.
There's only one remedy: READ THE BOOK!An Outstanding, Romantic Comedy The plot is not the important thing in this film. We have girl (and what a girl) meets stodgy boy and dislikes him. Girl falls for her woman-chasing boss and gets burned, and girl finally realizes that the serious fellow is the one for her. But the fun in this film is in the telling of the story and the road it takes to reach girl gets right boy. The acting is tremendous. A slightly-plump Renee Zellweger is incredible as the British heroine who can mess up everything in sight as she tries to find herself and Mister Right. Colin Firth plays an admirable crisp and correct Mark Darcy (the right man), and Hugh Grant is pleasingly slimy as Bridget's boss. The dialog is funny, and the action is hilarious. The story proceeds at breakneck speed to its happy ending. This is a terrific comedy and is well worth watching. In fact, you will probably enjoy it more than once.
