Bridget
Jones Presses on Into Adulthood – Serena Donadoni | Miami New Times – September 13, 2016
At the start of Bridget Jones’s Baby,
our intrepid heroine (Renée Zellweger) seems back at square one: alone on
an important night, consoling herself by drinking wine and singing along
to “All by Myself.” (Could those be the same pajama bottoms she wore
in Bridget Jones’s Diary?) Zellweger’s voiceover
strikes the familiar self-excoriating tone as Bridget reminds herself of
the gap between aspirations and outcome. But as much as this latest
installment draws on affection for the snappy first film, which blended Absolutely Fabulous with Pride and Prejudice (sans
zombies), it’s the differences that make Bridget Jones’s Baby the
warmest and most satisfying of the series. Helen
Fielding introduced Bridget Jones in 1995 in comic newspaper columns
written as diary entries, and then returned to The Independent ten
years, several novels and two film adaptations later for an update
detailing the character’s unexpected pregnancy. The twist? Bridget
doesn’t know whether the father is Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy, her
naughty and nice exes, portrayed by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth in the
first two films. Cleaver played a large part in Fielding's scenario, but
when Grant declined to reprise the role, it necessitated a rethink. Jack
Qwant (Patrick Dempsey) now occupies that corner of the love triangle:
He's a charming, cocksure American tech mogul who knows how to pitch woo. Even
without that crucial switch, this third feature might have suffered from
the sequelitis of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason: more of the same,
only bigger and wackier. (Events from that 2004 installment, which was
deftly directed by Beeban Kidron, have been expunged from the current
Bridget Jones universe, which references only the 2001 original.) In
Fielding’s 2005-06 columns, Bridget and her friends are unchanged in
their 40s. They frequent bars with the same crowd, still drink too much
and shirk responsibility with undiminished aplomb. The screenplay by
Fielding, Dan Mazer (I Give It a Year) and
Emma Thompson lays out a more interesting scenario, allowing Bridget to
evolve without losing her reckless optimism. Bridget's
friends Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Shazzer (Sally Phillips) are still
deliciously rude, but they’re married with growing families. Even
self-absorbed Tom (James Callus) is adopting a child with his partner,
which leaves Bridget the last singleton. Instead of wallowing in the
self-pity that opening scene suggests, she seizes the moment as an
opportunity for rebranding: No more tragic spinster, Bridget’s now a
mature sexpot. The last time she made a bold declaration, the New Year’s
resolution to straighten up and find a decent man inBridget Jones’s Diary,
she connected with Cleaver and Darcy. This time she meets the dashing
Jack, while the brooding Darcy reasserts himself. Director
Sharon Maguire (who made her feature debut with Bridget Jones’s Diary) toys with the wish fulfillment
aspect of the films by treating one encounter as a cheeky fairy tale.
After a gallant Jack has pulled Bridget out of a massive mud puddle, he
digs her lost shoe from the muck, fits it on her foot and declares, “It
fits!” before Bridget, as a red-faced Cinderella, flees without a word.
Maguire expertly handles the humor (intricate misunderstandings, exquisite
slapstick, Emma Thompson achieving Eve Arden-level quip delivery), but her
greatest strength is establishing a balance: Bridget Jones’s Baby is
a romantic comedy that’s truly both. There’s no filler in its 122
minutes, which allows the characters enough breathing room to consider
their choices. This
especially helps Darcy, who’s grown more emotionally closed-off. In Diary, Maguire captured Firth’s priceless expressions,
which conveyed what Darcy couldn’t speak: a death-ray stare aimed at
Cleaver, the sideways glance at a guffawing Bridget that captures the
longing of a well-bred boy who realizes he’s missing the fun. In one
smoldering gaze in this film, Firth melts away all of Darcy’s careful
hesitancy. The character had become a chiding scold in Edge of Reason, but
here he’s allowed to be funny again. Darcy’s dry wit is well suited to
the more grown-up Bridget Jones’s Baby, and his defense of a Pussy
Riot-like band pays off in delightfully droll ways. As
for Bridget: She's shed the excess weight and bad habits that once defined
her, become a television news producer, and faced romantic
disillusionment. Zellweger has also added a new element to Bridget, a
quality of airiness fused with solidity that suggests Jean Arthur. When
Bridget tells Jack and Mark that either could be the father, the scene is
staged for uncomfortable laughter (which it gets), but her quiet
revelation also delivers a gut-punch. Critics and entertainment
journalists who have focused their coverage on Zellweger's appearance have
overlooked her development into a strong character actress. Her wise,
light-hearted performance anchors this happy reunion, a surprising and
refreshing gift from a creative well that seemed to have run dry.
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