Renee Zellweger is back playing Bridget for the first time since “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” in 2004.
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Bridget Jones’s Baby hits theaters September 16.
It nearly seemed as if we would never walk into the world of Bridget Jones ever again, if only because of how truly underwhelming the sequel, “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason“, was.
Bridget Jones’s Baby, which is directed by Sharon Maguire, is released on Friday (16Sep16).
Suddenly, a so-so so far comedy takes off as the plot gets itself a goal.
“I was excited about coming back to it all, particularly because I got to again wear those big girl panties”, said the actress with a laugh.
The rest of the time finds Bridget doing her daffy heroine routine, shaking off one self-inflicted embarrassing moment after another. The dialogue, written by Bridget novelist Helen Fielding with Sacha Baron Cohen regular Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson, is at once scabrously sexed up and blistering about the bottom-feeding depths to which journalism has sunk. She is messy in that way women in other romcoms say they are but never actually are. His absence means that they have to find someone new for Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy to battle with for Bridget’s affections, after she becomes pregnant following a pair of one night stands. Darcy and Bridget didn’t work out, and at the outset he appears to have joined the ranks of the Smug Married. “But that’s what makes her so interesting”, Dempsey chimed in. Still, Bridget proves capable of taking on motherhood while figuring out her romantic situation, not to mention dealing with the hipsters at her job trying to replace good journalism with cats that look like Hitler. Clearly, some things never get old. And feminists who wrote Bridget off as a helpless, man-obsessed dits got it wrong then, as they likely will now.
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.
She’s considered a “geriatric” mother by her hilariously deadpan OB/GYN (a sensational Emma Thompson). She’s looking at a lonely future. Not as good as Hugh Grant’s sly-eyed elevator scene in “Bridget Jones’s Diary” – really, is anything as good as Hugh Grant’s sly-eyed elevator scene in “Bridget Jones’s Diary”? – but better than a Christmas sweater or a Turkey Curry Buffet. Bridget truly is the role that Zellwegger was born to play and time does not change that.
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For the past couple of years, more has been written about Renée Zellweger’s face (did she have plastic surgery or didn’t she?) than about her acting. She’s a producer on the television program “Hard News”, still has her great group of friends, even though they’re now all saddled with kids, and has achieved her ideal weight.
