Renée Zellweger Delivers
Jason
Solomons | The Wrap – September 5,
2016
Sequel introduces a new addition with a mystery dad.
Forget all that stuff about Renee Zellweger’s face – she still
delivers choice comic expressions and re-creates a much loved,
lived-in character.
Yes, Bridget Jones is back and – I’m sure this isn’t a spoiler –
this time she’s having a baby. The problem, the big comedy situation, is
that she doesn’t know who the father is. It could be handsome internet
dating billionaire Jack Qwant (played by dishy American Patrick
Dempsey), whom Bridget meets at a Glastonbury-type music festival when
this Prince Charming pulls her welly from a quagmire.
But it could also be Bridget’s perennial crush, Mr Mark Darcy, played as
ever by Colin Firth. He’s now a hugely successful barrister whose
current big case is defending the freedoms of a persecuted Russian girl
group called Poonani.
Bridget, now a 43-year-old, high-flying though ridiculously inept and
lonely TV news producer, has slept with both of these men within days of
each other. When she can’t squeeze into her skinny jeans, she
discovers she’s pregnant.
Some very British and very funny high jinks ensue, with key ingredients
from the Working Title British Rom Com Handbook all whizzed up in a
nutri-bullet of a script from Helen Fielding, with help from Dan Mazer and
Emma Thompson.
There is a lot of swearing, as well as “bonking,” “shafting” and
the zinger of Emma Thompson saying “fart.” Even
the kids are at it. A six-year-old shouts
to Bridget across a mandatorily cute country church: “Where the f–
were you?”
All this is part of some strange kind of Brit-com legacy, stretching all
the way back, of course, to that opening of “Four Weddings and a
Funeral.” Speaking of Hugh Grant, he’s not in this one,
although his Daniel Cleaver character does haunt the opening scenes, like
a sexually rampant ghost.
But mostly, the whole gang’s back together, on screen as well as off. Besides
writer Fielding, original director Sharon Maguire returns. Bridget’s reassembled friends include Sally
Phillips as Shazza, James Callis as gay personal trainer Tom,
and Shirley Henderson as Jude. They’re sketchily drawn but they serve
their purpose well, which is now mainly to have christenings and family
events so singleton Bridget can come along as the nominated Godmother and
self-appointed “spinster” and get herself in drunken trouble.
With all her old chums occupied by life’s responsibilities, Bridget has
a new friend, Miranda the presenter at Hard News, nicely played by Sarah
Solemani. Their relationship occasions the film’s most successful comic
set-pieces, which mostly involve calamities live on air, such as an
incident involving interviewing a Chinese chauffeur instead of a Korean
dictator. (The
moment was based on an infamous real-life BBC News mishap.) There’s also a brilliantly timed episode featuring Bridget’s personal
Google browsing history during a power point demonstration.
I laughed plenty and heartily amid the procession of British pop hits (Ed
Sheeran, Years and Years, Ellie Goulding) and litany of London locations
new and old (Borough Market, Greenwich Park, King’s Cross’s Granary
Square fountains, the former Olympic Swimming Pool and even Highbury
Fields, where Hugh Grant kissed Andie MacDowell all
those years ago).
Of course, there’s the traditional climactic cross-town dash, this time
to get to the hospital in time. It’s been a while since Working Title
had this kind of mojo, and one is reminded how polished and potent a comic
recipe it can be.
Maguire as director maintains a lively comic pace and although some of the
gags and set-ups have a distinctly sitcom feel, and the famous old diary
has been unsatisfactorily replaced with a vague blog-type tablet device,
Zellweger continues to give a bravura comic performance as Bridget.
Even if there’s not much room for any pathos here, this still feels like
a real person who cries and bruises and loves. She’s a woman gamely
surviving the pitfalls and pratfalls of her own desperation and
insecurities, and Zellweger creates a hugely sympathetic character, whose
English accent rarely falters and whom every member of the audience will
wish well, and cheer all the way up the aisle.
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