What a treat it is to dive back into the cosy world of Bridget Jones, who is the kind of old friend you can pick up with right where it left off, no matter how long it’s been.
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Bridget Jones’s Baby opens Friday, and as many humiliating situations as Jones (Renée Zellweger) has been through, there’s still one more guy who adores her in the sequel. The pity party’s over soon enough though, as she skips the song and boogies instead to “Jump Around”.
“I’m trying not to think I’m past my sexual sell-by date”, laments Bridget, as she careens at high speed towards her 43rd birthday without a wedding ring on her finger.
She does, in fact, have a groove, perhaps for the first time. To make matters worse, she doesn’t know who the father is; whether it’s the new guy that she met Jack (Patrick Dempsey) or her ex-boyfriend Mark (Colin Firth). “It is good that there’s (been) a little time off”. At this time in her life, she’s got a lot more on her mind than finding a new beau. Just who else is also with child in this scenario – Jack or Mark – is the question that’s up for debate in the film.
Bridget Jones’s Baby finds our modern woman at 43, single and wrestling with the notion that (save for her “ideal weight” and producing gig on an worldwide news station) certain prospects in her life are further behind than ahead. She grew a human with that body.
Renee Zellweger attends the “Bridget Jones Baby” New York Premiere at Paris Theater on September 12, 2016 in New York City.
Bridget Jones’s Baby, the third film chronicling the anti-heroine’s trials and tribulations, sees her starting a family – albeit somewhat unconventionally.
This relatable (if somewhat aspirational) character comes not just from Zellweger’s performance, but also from the assured direction of Sharon Maguire, who helmed “Bridget Jones’s Diary” in 2001, as well as the fast, fresh, and very amusing screenplay.
The movie is directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson. At its best, it allows them to do what they’re more than comfortable doing. She’s still awkward and prone to embarrassing foibles, but is older, wiser, comfortable in her own skin. At first, it seems that not much has changed with Bridget.
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Lest yet another movie gets reviewed by some dude, I did my due diligence and asked one of my coworkers, a true Bridget Joneshead who read all the books and had seen all the movies, what she would need from this threequel to feel satisfied as a fan.
