Film Reviews

May 13, 2001 - "Bridget Jones Diary"

By The verdict: 9/10 ñ Go meet Miss Jones.

"Bridget Jones's Diary" took the audacious choice of casting a Hollywood starlet (Renee Zellwegger) in the role of a woman ñ albeit a fictional one ñ that has become a hero to millions of British women: Bridget Jones, the heroine of Helen Feilding's bestselling novel about love and disillusionment among the women of London's Generation X.

Controversy aside (as it should be, since Zellwegger is perfect ñ and even nails the accent convincingly), the film adaptation from Sharon Maguire (Feiding helped adapt her own novel along with screenwriters Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis) hardly misses a beat. Pure entertainment from start to finish, except for the very-nineties foul language, it has the feel of a girl-versus-world farce from the fifties.

Bridget Jones is a slightly overweight and very single 32-year-old working at a publishing house who seems to spend much of her time alternately fantasizing about her dreamy boss, Hugh Grant and avoiding a snotty lawyer her mother tried setting her up with, Colin Firth, who nicely underplays his role as a repressed divorcee. Determined to land the elusive Mr Right, she sets about keeping a diary to chart her progress as she loses weight, cuts out smoking and trims her alcohol consumption. To her astonishment, Mr Grant starts chasing her and the huge boost that comes with being his significant other finally finds her happy (and increasingly successful at becoming the woman she thinks she wants to be). Inevitably, her relationship with him turns out not to be what it seemed and she quits her job in disgust ñ and inadvertently lands work as a reporter for a low-rent TV news magazine. Her tenuously civil acquaintance with Mr Firth proves fortuitous on an important assignment and his good grace in the matter exposes him as nice guy after all. When dreamboat Grant comes crawling back, she finds herself in the middle of a nasty feud as his past with Mr Firth comes out in violent fashion. All of this takes place against the afterthought-style backdrop of the disintegration of Bridget's parents marriage. Gemma Page and Jim Broadbent play Mum and Dad, and while it's always a treat to watch Broadbent, the whole episode feels a little tacked-on in order to provide a counterpoint to Bridget's tribulations ñ as though one were needed in case we didn't quite catch on to what she was going through. That one complaint aside, this really is good stuff. Funny and bittersweet in just the right mix, Zellwegger's performance is a knockout. Grant of course, is becoming increasingly good at playing the wormy cad (see last year's "Small Time Crooks") and is a load of fun to watch as he subtly turns Bridget inside out. Firth is one of the more underrated actors from Britain today and his ability to turn the audience slowly round to his side is the sort of thing Supporting Actor Oscars are made of.

The verdict: 9/10 ñ Go meet Miss Jones.