Bridget Jones’s Baby is a charming return to form Lindsey Bahr | The Associated Press – September 12, 2016
Renée
Zellweger is charming as ever in “Bridget Jones’s Baby ,”
a lively return to form for the unlikely trilogy about an ordinary woman
and her professional and romantic woes. It turns out a little break is
just what this series needed to find its footing after the manic missteps
of “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” which fell into some of the
all too common traps of sequels looking to up the stakes (hello, Thailand
prison sequence). That’s
likely due to the fact that Sharon Maguire, who directed the practically
perfect “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” is back (Beeban Kidron directed the
second), working from a script from author Helen Fielding, Emma Thompson
(very funny as an unamused doctor) and Dan Mazer. Let’s
get over the silly fact that this movie essentially had to press reboot on
the happy ending of the second, when Bridget said at the end how even at
33 she was able to find love and happiness with one Mark Darcy (Colin
Firth). Cut to 12 years later (between movies), Bridget is in her 40s and
Mark Darcy has gone off and married someone else. But
this is an evolved Bridget. Sure,
she might be eating dessert alone in that same old London flat on that
same old couch listening to the same old Celine Dion song, but it’s not
tragic. It just is. Her friends all flaked on her and so she has a night
by herself. The sense is “whatever” not “woe is me.” Indeed,
her life looks pretty good. She’s now a high-profile TV news producer
who seems happy at work – gone are the fireman’s pole humiliations of
on-camera life. She’s also fitter (and quite happy about it) and has
gotten a fancier wardrobe befitting of her success. When
her younger friend and co-worker Miranda (a terrific Sarah Solemani)
invites her to a weekend getaway, Bridget arrives at the airport looking
like a Nancy Meyers leading lady in cream and white. Of course, she
doesn’t realize they’re going to an outdoor music festival. So, she
falls in some mud, but she also gets the attention of Jack (Patrick
Dempsey). He’s a single, not sleazy relationship guru who is immediately
smitten with Bridget. She
has a good time with Jack and goes on her way. A few weeks later, she
finds herself having an unexpectedly romantic night with a now-separated
Darcy. She walks away from that, too, and continues on with life until she
gets the news that she’s pregnant. It could be either Darcy’s or
Jack’s. Both
men hop to the challenge, trying to out-partner one another at every turn.
Is this a fantasy, or is this just men being kind to the woman who is
possibly carrying their child? Does it really matter? Much
of the original cast is back and wonderful (Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones,
Sally Phillips and Shirley Henderson), save for a sorely missed Daniel
Cleaver (Hugh Grant). You’ll find out what happened to him. There
is still a madcap, slapstick jitteriness to dear Bridget, but calmness has
emerged, too – that of a woman who has finally grown into her own skin.
She is messy in that way that women in other rom-coms “say” they are
but never actually are. 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. Though
the premise of “Bridget Jones’s Baby” makes it all seem like it’s
all about the guy again, it’s never felt so much like Bridget’s story.
The man is just gravy. This movie, for all its comedic ridiculousness and
wild circumstance of the paternity crisis, is a jubilant celebration of
women. If
we’re lucky, we’ll get to check in with her again in another few
years. “Bridget
Jones’s Baby,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion
Picture Association of America for “language, sex references and some
nudity.” Running time: 122 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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