Bridget
Jones's Baby Empire Review
Terri
White | Empire - September 6, 2016
Bridget (Renée Zellweger)
is back. She’s older (the film opens just shy of her 43rd birthday),
more successful but not much wiser as she becomes pregnant and is unsure
by whom: long-term love interest Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) or new American
suitor Jack Quant (Patrick Dempsey). As the birth nears, who will turn out
to be the daddy?
★★★★
The third in the Bridget Jones franchise
opens in a familiar fashion: Bridget is alone, an overflowing glass of
white wine in clenched fist as she sadly sways on her sofa to the strains
of All By Myself. Until suddenly she stops, exclaims 'Fuck
off!', switches off Sad FM and flips on House of Pain. And just like that
Bridget is back: still bumbling and fumbling but immediately funnier and
sharper than before.
Picking up 12 years after the not-so successful second film Edge
Of Reason, much has changed: Bridget and Mark Darcy have been apart
for five years, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) is not around (we won't spoil
how or why, but it's a highlight of the film) and Bridget is single again
and focusing on friendships and her job as a top news producer. Just as it
sounds, Bridget Jones's Baby is about Bridget and her
rather unexpected baby, conceived after either a one-off bunk-up with the
American entrepreneur she meets at a festival or a one-off bunk-up with Mr
Darcy at a christening.
Though the story occasionally stretches credibility, the warmth and
wit so reminiscent of the original Bridget
Jones's Diary propels
you along, being due in large part to the return of one woman: director
Sharon Maguire. You feel her filthy, funny thumbprints pressed on almost
every scene, and it's clear that the key chemistry in Bridget will
never be between her and a male love interest but between Zellweger and
Maguire. Theirs is a particular alchemy.
Which, truthfully, is something to be thankful for as ultimately, while
the dynamic between Zellweger and Firth is as solid as ever, her pairing
with Dempsey never delivers; him playing a one-note nice guy with a
megawatt smile.
The real stand-out is Emma Thompson who wrote and created her own part as
Bridget’s doctor and shamelessly steals every single scene with a
wonderful collection of one-liners (most memorably advising the expectant
fathers to leave the delivery room as her “ex-husband described it as
watching his favourite pub burn down”).
Sarah Solemani is also a welcome addition as Bridget’s thirty-something
work friend Miranda, bringing a razor sharp sense of comic timing and
lending a surprising but welcome relevance to Bridget in 2016.
Most pleasing though is the message of the new Bridget
Jones. While she’s long had a bumpy relationship with feminism,
being accused of looking for life’s solutions in a relationship with a
man, the central message delivered with a punch is that actually it’s
irrelevant who the daddy is. The relationship that matters most is the one
she’s developing with her child and ultimately, the one she has with
herself. You have to have a heart of coal not to laugh (a lot), cry (a
bit) and leave wanting to see it all over again.
More than a match for the original, the third outing for Bridget has a
solid story with holes you’ll forgive thanks to the much-missed onscreen
magic created by a director and her leading woman.
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