The movie is packed with belly laughs,
but it’s just not *our* Bridget

Rosie Fletcher | Digital Spy – September 16, 2016

All by herself, ain’t gonna be, all by herself anymore.

She was a klutz in 2001 in Bridget Jones’ Diary, a liability in 2004 in Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, but now 12 years later in her third instalment Bridget is in her 40s and embarking on motherhood.

But can the former bearer of giant pants and inappropriate bunny suits traverse into a new era of adulthood without gaining too much dignity and losing too much of the essence of Bridget?

The answer is: sort of. 

Director of the first film Sharon Maguire returns after taking a hiatus on the somewhat disappointing Edge of Reason.

Our new Bridge (Renée Zellweger) is 43, her ‘ideal weight’ (ie. super skinny) and living in a fantasy flat in central London, while working for a broadcast news show. 

Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) is hitched to someone else, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) is out of the picture and Bridget doing fine by herself (an opening sequence were we see her sat on the sofa in her ‘jama’s with the first bars of ’All By Myself’ blaring out before she shouts “oh fuck off!” and sticks on House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ makes the point very clear).

All she really needs, according to her new best mate, Miranda (Sarah Solemani), is a really good shag. 

The first act is a mix of joyful slapstick and single-girl wish fulfilment as Bridge and Miranda go festival glamping, get pissed, fall over, meet Ed Sheeran and get laid. And in Bridget’s case, soon after a chance encounter with a separated Darcy at a function, gets laid twice.

Suddenly she’s pregnant and doesn’t know who the father is - handsome American billionaire Jack (Patrick Dempsey) or former love of her life Mark (Firth)? It’ll potentially hurt the baby to find out, so they’ll have to spend the next nine months trying to get along.

That it’s progressive, positive, important and sensitively handled is without question.

Juggling issues of ’geriatric pregnancy’, the stresses of an unmarried woman with a good job trying to handle career and impending motherhood with the judgement of the next generation, but the support of her mates is a story not often enough told - or certainly not in a broad comedy and the third part of a franchise. 

It’s undeniably funny too - at its best when Miranda’s knocking over a bunch of portaloos in a Zorb, or Jack and Mark are trying to carry a massively pregnant Bridget through a set of glass revolving doors. Zellweger is no less game than she was in the early films when sliding bum-to-camera down a fireman’s pole. But somehow this isn’t *quite* the Bridget we knew.

Part of the joy of Jones is that she was an every woman. Drank too much, smoked too many fags, failed at dieting and had sex with the wrong guys, but was ultimately a nice person with a good heart.

She was us, with all our wobbly bits, our guilty habits, our dodgy pants, accidental outbursts and cringe-worthy moments. 

Sure, ‘new Bridget’ falls face down in the mud, has awkward sex, and - yes, gets trapped in a glass revolving door with two blokes, either of whom could be the father of her kid - but it’s not the same.

Suddenly she’s become aspirational, not inspirational. She’s a gorgeous, wealthy(ish), media-type with two near-perfect men head-over-heels for her. She’s (by necessity) quit smoking and drinking, eats healthily and seems to take to the idea of motherhood immediately. 

It’s no bad thing to see an intelligent, capable and normal woman be self-sufficient and successful, juggling career and family. It’s good. It’s important. 

And Maguire brings a distinctly and refreshingly female eye to the movie, with the sex scenes focusing on pleasure and not flesh, while Solemani’s Miranda provides an enjoyably cheeky replacement for Hugh Grant’s womanising Cleaver. 

We’re glad this film exists and we’re happy things worked out for Bridge. 

We’re just not sure she’s one of us anymore.