Bridget Jones’s Diary *** (2001, Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant) – Classic Movie Review 371

Dear diary,

It’s April 13 2001. This morning I got up, had a fag, went to work, was fed up as usual, and I wanted to see a good movie in the evening. So I booked a ticket for Bridget Jones’s Diary, because I’d heard how witty the book was. Helen Fielding’s romantic comedy bestseller, I think.

There was this American woman in the film, Renée Zellweger, who I think I’m supposed to have heard of. She had this fantastic posh English accent, even though she’s from Texas. But I’d rather have seen that English girl from Titanic, Kate Winslet.

The film was really quite funny. Not hysterical, but witty and often hilarious, and generally quite okay. It’s set in the Eighties, where the heroine Bridget is a plump no-hoper working in a publisher’s office. Bridget smokes, eats and drinks a lot, and desperately wants a man, even though she pretends she doesn’t because she’s a feminist. So she begins a new year by resolving to find love and tranquillity.

She has a fling with her big bad wolf of a boss. He’s Hugh Grant, doing his usual thing, but this time as a Mr Nasty. This is hilarious stuff! I quite like Hugh Grant. He’s a funny bloke. Anyway, then Bridget falls for a clumsy bloke called Darcy. This is funny, too, because he’s played by Colin Firth, who was Mr Darcy in the TV Pride and Prejudice.

Firth isn’t exactly a bundle of laughs, though he’s likeable and he plays the romance well. But, like the whiny character of Bridget Jones herself, the film started to drag a little by the end, even though it’s only 97 minutes long. I guess I’m not really the target audience.

Still, dear diary, I liked Bridget Jones’s Diary enough to tell my women chums they should definitely see it too. I think they’ll identify with Bridget and probably warm to Zellweger too. To be fair, she’s pretty much game for anything, does it nicely and she really is quite amusing.

PS: This big money-spinning first Bridget Jones film cost $26 million and took $72 million in the US and £42 million in the UK.

The film ends up like this. After ‘The End’ appears on screen, it’s crossed out and ‘The Beginning’ is added. Unsurprisingly then, for the fans, they made a less good sequel – Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004).

For the 15 version of Bridget Jones’s Diary, a use of the c-word (which would have landed them with an 18) is cut in favour of ‘cow’, as in ‘Careful, you ham-fisted cow’.

PPS: I notice they’re planning a belated third movie, Bridget Jones’s Baby.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 371

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