Bridget Jones' Diary Bridget Jones’ Diary is a pretty
funny movie based on Helen Fielding’s novel, and stars Renee Zellweger as
our Bridget, who manages to embarrass herself, go through a self-destructive
relationship, and drown her sorrows in booze, cigarettes, food, and some
well-meaning friends before possibly falling in love. The
movie is amusing fluff, although don’t go into it expecting any real insight
or new ideas on relationships.
As the movie begins, Bridget is at her lowest. Yet
again, she is bored and alone on New Years, and overall bemoans the fact
that she is single, while equally disturbed at the sorts of guys her mother
hopes to fix her up with every year at the New Years party. This
year it’s some dull boring barrister named Mark (Colin Firth), who is apparently
dull in Bridget’s eyes because he is wearing a reindeer sweater (of course,
the fact that Mark himself is a stuffed shirt might play a part too!).
It doesn’t matter too much because Bridget overhears Mark saying that he
wouldn’t want to have anything to do with such a shallow individual anyway.
Bridget claims to have finally had enough of her misery,
and her resolution is to do something about it. So she plans to chart
her hopeful rise to more happier states in a diary, and one of her biggest
hopes is to find a sensible boyfriend, and to avoid men with certain characteristics…
all while attempting, in vain, to avoid the one man who embodies all of the
bad characteristics, her boss at the publishing house where she works, played
by Hugh Grant. But, of course, temptation is a hard thing to avoid,
and soon the two are involved in an affair. He seems perfect, because
he is funny, they have great sex, and he’s rich too, of course.
But while they have the affair, Mark comes into the picture again.
Apparently, he and Daniel, Grant’s character, were chums in the old days,
but, as Daniel tells it, Mark, the seemingly boring old barrister, had an
affair with Daniel’s fiancée, and Daniel actually walked in on them
during the dirty deed.
Later on, however, Daniel himself is accused of philandering,
and therefore Bridget feels she has little choice but to quit her job at
the publishing firm and find another job. She soon finds it as a reporter
for a low-rent public affairs show. During this time, Mark seems to
appear more often in her life, and later declares his liking for her.
So in the end, you wonder, which guy will be hers in the end?
The movie isn’t really as subversive or unique as I would
have thought. I thought it would be some skewed take on love, but it’s
really a vulgar version of a clichéd romance novel, where the message
is that a woman can never be truly happy without the perfect guy. Of
course, the perfect guy turns out to be some proper dullard, while the most
entertaining fellow in the picture turns out to be a sleazebag.
This could be such due to the acting, as well as which character gets the
most screen-time or impact. Hugh Grant, as Daniel, is quite entertaining
to watch, and is the type of actor who is able to get laughs just on the
mere fact of his first shot. He maintains the act of being charming
and devilish at the same time, and reminds me a little of another Grant ---
Cary, that is. As with Cary, Hugh has the skill of making almost everything
he says funny, or at least containing some form of wit. His flirtations
with Bridget at the beginning are amusing, especially when he writes some
lecherous emails about Bridget’s choice of wardrobe (“Did skirt call
in sick today?” referring to its rather short size).
Colin Firth is our dull and dour barrister, and while
Firth does try to inject some wit into the proceedings, overall, his character
really isn’t all that interesting, mainly because he doesn’t do a lot until
close to the end of the movie. Mark turns out to be the Prince Charming
of the story, and therefore the guy who Bridget must definitely be with at
the end of the picture…..and this is where the story falls apart. I
won’t reveal everything, but Bridget manages to embarrass herself in an even
worse way than before, and is totally and painfully awkward to the viewer.
And the last scene is something that I don’t think too many sensible women,
or even the insensible Bridget, would do. But then again, I’m cynical
and demoralized enough to say that true love is, to coin a Brit term, bollocks.
Renee Zellwegger is amusing as Bridget, and seems to get
the British accent down alright, although it probably sounds a little too
posh for her middle class origins. Her character, for the most
part, is convincing as a sad single girl who wishes for something exciting
to happen in her life; in the first scene, set on New Year’s, she is pathetic
enough to dramatically lip-sync “All by Myself”, and that’s proof that she
is even more pathetic than this single person writing this review to you.
Being single and alone often dictates, for some, that such people are also
awkward in public, and she certainly demonstrates that during a book launching
in which she stumbles terribly over an introduction which, in all it’s garish
PR splendour, praises the author of the novel as one of the best of our era,
before noticing that Salman Rushdie and Jeffery Archer are also in the room,
and proceeds to suck up to them as well.
Bridget is probably not the best role model in the planet,
however, and the movie doesn’t exactly try to make her escape the stereotypes.
She’s obsessed about her weight, and also her food, cigarette, and alcohol
intake, is worried about the type of guy she attracts, and manages to embarrass
herself a lot and not look very professional at all. And like I said
the story is a clichéd romance story, so it’s not as if she learns
anything earth-shattering about herself.
Her weight: apparently her high point is 140 lbs., and
throughout the film she is worried about getting in to her clothes, including
her underwear. Geez, 140 pounds?! I weigh about 145, and I consider
myself to be thin, so I don’t know what she’s complaining about.
She looks quite all right to me. But then again, society seems to think
that a certain weight or shape is bad; people made note of the fact that
Zellwegger gained weight for the role, but if nobody told me that, I wouldn’t
have noticed. But then again, the voluptuous type is something that
I am partial to.
The cigarette and alcohol intake…..well, that is kind
of unfortunate if you have to drown your sorrows in drugs, even if they are
legal, and they certainly don’t make you any happier.
The worst is when she manages to embarrass herself frequently.
While this is a comedy, and she is funny sometimes in these scenes, it does
tend to get a little too much, as if she has no professionalism whatsoever,
and she needs a man to steer her in the right direction. Our heroine
is a heroine because she is such a cute, goofy little screw-up, while all
the bad women are solid, professional… and thin! She doesn’t seem to
be very qualified for much, and when she gets the job at the TV public affairs
show, she makes a disaster out of a few reports, has no grace in front of
the TV cameras, and doesn’t have any hint of newsgathering skills.
She is saved from complete oblivion only because of some interception by
Mark. Such people probably do exist, but they wouldn’t be working at any
public affairs show for too long.
All of these issues create problems with the movie.
I enjoyed watching it for what it was; a piece of fluff, and Zellwegger and
Grant certainly work together well in a romantic comedy setting. So
I do just barely recommend this movie just for the light entertainment value,
even if the overall message is lame and clichéd. So if you try
not to believe a word of this film, it will be a bit more enjoyable.
Rating: ***
Discuss the film itself or the subject matter of the film.
Back
home
Back to
movie reviews
Bridget Jones' Diary