The actress reprises her role as the hapless, unlucky-in-love Bridget for the third film in the franchise, reuniting onscreen with Colin, who plays Mark Darcy, and appearing alongside series newcomer Patrick, who portrays the British actor’s new love rival, Jack Qwant. It’s a case of “whatever”, not “woe is me”.
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Rather than purely focusing on work, Renee is now aiming to strike a good balance between filming and her home life, and the Oscar-winner, who’s been dating musician Doyle Bramhall II since 2012, finds she’s much happier with her life these days. 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.
Once again, our Bridget is basically a modern-day Austen heroine, which means two men must battle for her affections.
Drunk and disoriented, Bridget manages to stumble into the wrong tent at a “hippie- like” festival and ends up in bed with Jack (Patrick Dempsey; Sweet Home Alabama). He’s a single, not sleazy relationship guru who is immediately smitten with Bridget. A few weeks later, she finds herself having an unexpectedly romantic night with a now-separated Darcy. Bridget truly is the role that Zellwegger was born to play and time does not change that. Yes, she gets the guy, has an interesting job, and nice apartment in London, but she’s also approachable, insecure, flawed, and clumsy. It could be either Darcy’s or Jack’s.
Both men hop to the challenge, trying to out-partner one another at every turn.
Not that Dempsey, as a tech zillionaire of some kind (it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things), is a replacement for Grant.
There is still a madcap, slapstick jitteriness to dear Bridget, but calmness has emerged, too. She’s still awkward and prone to embarrassing foibles, but is older, wiser, comfortable in her own skin.
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AS creative pregnancies go, Bridget Jones’s Baby has taken longer than most to come full-term. “No ending was ever printed in the scripts”. And she is certainly not the other single gal of her time, Carrie Bradshaw, who seemed to become less and less relatable as the years went by. The film just assumes this as fact, balancing Bridget’s wryly self-deprecating inner monologue alongside the external perspective that sees her for the fetching beauty that she is. This movie, for all its comedic ridiculousness and wild circumstance of the paternity crisis, is a jubilant celebration of women. Without ever being excessive, the movie takes wonderful advantage of the freedom that comes with skewing more towards adults – throwing around profanity and plenty of sexuality/innuendo for humor without being obscene or overly blue.
