“She’s a professional and intelligent, and yet so warm and amusing and down to earth”. Just look at it as the same old story, just given a Bridget Jones twist (neurotic inner monologue and all). “There’s more texture and more dimensions than even before”.
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Rene Zellweger told People magazine she spent six years away from acting because she was exhausted and didn’t feel healthy. Jack and Mark compete against each other to win Bridget’s affections, which quickly descends into pettiness, especially because Jack is overly romantic as Mark struggles to express his feelings. When Jack finds out that he might be the father of Bridget’s baby, he’s overjoyed and insists on showering her with baby gifts and helping her through the labor process.
This time around, Bridget’s a little less All By Myself and a touch more Jump Around: She’s lean and mean at an acceptable fighting weight and loving her job as a British news producer. But wait, who’s the daddy?
Then her love life takes a turn and Bridget meets a dashing American named Jack (Dempsey), the suitor who is everything Mr. Darcy is not. While the setup ventures into sitcom territory, director Sharon Maguire and writers Helen Fielding (author of the Bridget Jones books), Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson for the most part find fresh ways to approach the material. Bridget’s sexual mishap isn’t played against her, the film actually cuts to the chase pretty quickly and has the film focus on Bridget’s life balancing two possible fathers rather than selfishly keeping it from them.
After breaking up with Mark Darcy (Firth), Bridget Jones’s (Zellweger) “happily ever after” hasn’t quite gone according to plan. Darcy and Bridget didn’t work out, and at the outset he appears to have joined the ranks of the Smug Married. They bookmark the heroine’s trials and vacillations with nostalgic flashbacks to earlier films reminding us of Bridget’s infuriating obsessions with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant’s paramours.
Twelve years have passed since the last installment, and there hasn’t been a clamoring for another movie about Bridget Jones, but with this outing, she – and Zellweger – makes a welcome comeback.
Renee Zellweger regrets trying to hide her exhaustion.
“Bridget Jones’s Baby” might just be the best romantic comedy since the original “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and it all comes from Renée Zellwegger’s wonderful charm as Bridget. Easy, breezy and light on its feet – even if it’s about thirty minutes too long – the film easily passes the low bar set by the logic-impaired second Bridget Jones outing, released twelve years ago.
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Now she’s back, could a fourth film be on the horizon?
