Zellweger
delivers in fun romp heavy with expectation
Peter Bradshaw | The Guardian – September
6, 2016
Sell-by dates don’t mean anything... do they?” Bridget Jones is
talking about the eco-friendly biodegradable condoms she bought ages ago,
and with which she has suddenly ended an aeon-long sex famine by using
twice, on getting suddenly lucky with two chaps within a few days: dishy
online dating expert (Patrick Dempsey) and her old smoulderer, the
unexpectedly single Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Now 40-something Bridget has
ascended the duff and there is a Mamma-Mia!-style
mystery about the dad’s identity. The director is Sharon Maguire, and
the writers are Emma Thompson, Dan Mazer and Helen
Fielding, author of the original newspaper column and bestselling book.
As for Bridget’s own sell-by date, well, she now joins the conga-line of
figures from the late 90s and early noughties making their sheepish
comeback: David
Brent, AbFab, Cold
Feet. But Renée Zellweger’s own return after 12 years in the
dithery role she created – and after a six-year absence from the screen
– has been overshadowed by a massive media overreaction to cosmetic work
which she has evidently had done.
It was an overreaction based on misleading still publicity shots and
common-or-garden weight loss – this is a sleeker Bridget – and
naturally coloured by the traditional ungallant and misogynist need to
punish female stars for their looks. In this movie, Bridget’s familiar
crinkly-eyed smile has been replaced by a clearer and more direct gaze.
But so what? In some scenes in this film, and from some angles, Zellweger
looks to me pretty much the same. At other moments, it’s as if she’s
regenerated, like Dr Who. But her Bridget is still the same old klutz:
unsure whether to embrace her new sexual destiny of cougardom or being an
attractive spinster or Spilf.
This is a better Bridget than the last movie, The
Edge of Reason, because it doesn’t feel the need to indulge
shark-jumping setpieces like zipping off to Thailand. We stick in her old
London manor of Borough and she’s still in the same old scuzzy flat,
still working for a cable TV news company, where she has now improbably
become a producer.
This is pretty broad comedy we’re talking about: not Mrs
Brown’s Boys-broad, but broad nevertheless. Yet the effect is
achieved in the same way as the first movie. Basically, Bridget presides
over a kind of coalition government of very good supporting turns which on
aggregate enforce their chaotic comic rule over the audience. Just about.
Sadly, Hugh Grant’s über-cad Daniel Cleaver is no longer with us, but
Colin Firth’s uptight Darcy is still a droll turn – he seems to be
channelling his royal hauteur as George VI even more than ever, still
super handsome and distinguished, but his head and neck slightly
etiolated, like a very posh tortoise. There is a nice scene when Darcy and
Bridget find themselves having to pose uncomfortably with a baby to which
they are now godparents. “Perhaps a kiss on the head, sir...?” says
the wheedling photographer, “... mm ... I actually meant the baby.”
Then there is Emma Thompson, who has cheekily written herself a part
as Bridget’s droll doctor – an evolved progression, perhaps, from the
drily knowing nurse she played opposite Jeff Goldblum in Richard
Curtis’s The Tall Guy.
One distinct breakout performance is Sarah Solemani (who played a prim
teacher in Jack Whitehall’s TV sitcom Bad Education) and is now the archly sexy presenter Miranda on
Bridget’s show and who takes her to a music festival in a (successful)
attempt to get her laid. Bridget is unconvinced that “glamping” is any
better than camping just because you’ve added a g and an l: “Gladolf
Hitler would be no better.” Solemani has a nice moment when she briefly
but horribly bangs her hip on the TV stage set as she walks across it and
has to keep talking.
Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent are amiably back as Bridget’s mum and dad,
Jones completely unsure how FaceTime works on her smartphone and standing
for the parish council for the Conservative Party. She is horrified by the
double-daddy dilemma. “You mean it was a three-way, darling?” Sally
Phillips, Shirley Henderson and James Callis are themselves brought back
as Bridge’s friend-chorus of baffled dismay and qualified approval.
What sealed the deal for me – by a whisker – was the gigantic physical
comedy that Dempsey, Zellweger and Firth uncorked as they try to get
through the hospital revolving door as Bridget is about to give birth, the
traditional romcom rush to the airport having been re-invented for this
maternal drama. This is the best way to end what can only can be described
as the Bridget Jones franchise: something resembling a likeable,
good-natured one-off TV holiday special.