“There’s such a sweetness to who she is, such as purity to who she is as a person, that I wasn’t really thinking ‘Tart'”.
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Zellweger is quite good in this silly adult Valentine, directed by the original filmmaker, Sharon Maguire, and co-written by actress Emma Thompson, who plays Bridget’s OBGYN.
And what a victor “Bridget Jones’s Baby” is indeed.
At the start of Bridget Jones’s Baby, our intrepid heroine (Renée Zellweger) seems back at square one: alone on an important night, consoling herself by drinking wine and singing along to “All by Myself”.
“And because of the choices I was making and the life that I was living, I had no time to develop that in my life”.
And therein lies the problem: Within a week or two of Bridget’s encounter with Jack, she runs into her ex-love Mark at a wedding and is, er, swept off her feet again.
The film has a number of rom-com cliches even a love triangle but they don’t make you cringe.
The trailers for Bridget Jones’s Baby heavily advertised Bridget’s surprise pregnancy and her difficulty in figuring out the identity of the father of her child. The antics that Bridget finds herself in during the film never play her situation to a detriment, but to a joyously hilarious positive note.
Despite the tension the film wants to set up between Darcy and Qwant, the best running theme for much of the movie is that Jones doesn’t need either of the boobs vying for her. He was even excited to know that he might be the father of Bridget’s baby. While the dirtier jokes aren’t equally as amusing, it’s such a breath of fresh air to see a film find room for both in an R-rated parameter. It was also 15 years ago since the world was mesmerized with Jones’ “Diary“.
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Despite being main star of the “Bridget Jones” franchise and an Oscar victor, Renee managed to enjoy her break from the limelight without being hassled by the public. “Bridget Jones’s Baby” is the ideal remedy. For once, Bridget has everything completely under control. Contrast that with the hard-bitten career woman that is the typical lead in romantic comedies such as Mila Kunis’s role in “Friends with Benefits”, or Natalie Portman’s in “No Strings Attached”. “I just needed a little normalcy, I think, you know”. Kate O’Flynn turns in a broad comic performance as Bridget’s hostile new boss, Alice Peabody, whose solution to everything is more cat videos. Maguire, reportedly the model for Bridget’s fizzy friend Shazzer, directs this new sequel with the same antic flair she brought to Bridget Jones’s Diary when the novel-based franchise began in 2001. Bridget has a lot of catching up to do, and the film never once feels forced in into its assimilation into 2016.
