120 Pounds and 1,000,000 Cigarettes Later

By Stephen Holden, New York Times

So what if you've put on a few extra pounds, appear gawky and tongue-tied in tense social situations, and wear bulky, little-girl underwear on a heavy date? And so what if you don't follow ''The Rules'' and still give your heart too easily to a suave charmer you suspect (no, you're pretty sure) of being a cad? What's important is being yourself. After all, isn't it the real you, the quirky, quick-witted, honest, plucky, chin-up, lovable, wonderful inner you that he's going to recognize as the genuine ruby shining amid a pile of fakes? 

Allegiance to blind faith in the true-blue inner you to attract Prince Charming is the reassuring romantic philosophy trumpeted by the film adaptation of Helen Fielding's best seller, ''Bridget Jones's Diary.'' That wisp of novel is so charming with its mixture of insouciance, wit and candor that it's enough to restore a belief in fairy tale endings to the most embittered casualty of the urban dating wars. True, Billy Joel expressed the same sentiment a bit more bluntly in a love song addressed to a woman he has long since divorced: ''I love you just the way you are.'' But the song and its promise live on. Who could resist such convincing valentines? 

Bridget Jones, in case you didn't know, is a 32-year-old bachelorette who works in a London publishing house and frets with sad amusement about her increasingly iffy prospects for finding a long-term relationship. Summoning up her shaky willpower, she decides to adopt the usual self-improvement regimen to make herself more desirable. She will lose 20 pounds, cut down on alcohol, cigarettes and sweets, and land the boat of her dreams. Her diary entries are prefaced with meticulous records of her progress (and lack thereof) in achieving her stringent numerical goals. 

What makes Bridget irresistible is that even when downhearted, she maintains a rueful sense of humor. Defeated by her immediate circumstances and gone into hiding, she remains intrepid in spirit. A woman who loves men and loves sex, she is a true believer in the possibility of romantic fulfillment without any moon-June-spoon ickiness: it's just you and me, babe, the real you and the real me. 

Openhearted and girlish in some ways, canny and sophisticated in others, Bridget is entertaining even when in the deepest funk. Most important, everything she thinks and says is informed by a critical, clear-eyed intelligence, even if she botches the actual words. Yet having soldiered through romantic disappointments, she remains remarkably uncurdled by bitterness and cynicism. Aside from her highly questionable taste in clothes and her inability to cook a multi-course home feast in which the soup isn't an alarmingly metallic shade of blue, what's not to adore? 

In translating ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' to the screen, all that really matters is bringing this complicated, somewhat reactionary character fully and lovably to life. In choosing the princess to play this princess, who could have imagined that Renée Zellweger, a native Texan, who put on 20 pounds for the role, would be so perfect? Adopting an impeccable British accent that's not too hoity-toity, and softening her character's romantic desperation, Ms. Zellweger brings the same qualities -- a flinty integrity, a childlike stubbornness and an innocent face across which emotions melt like strawberry ice cream -- that animated her performances in ''Jerry Maguire'' and ''Nurse Betty.'' 

But this role is bigger and richer than those parts. Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real. It is a performance so airy you barely sense the work that must have gone into it. Throughout the film you ardently root for her to succeed and pray that the two men who end up coming to blows over her (in an improbable and awkwardly staged fistfight) recognize her goodness, inner beauty and all-around specialness. 

Those two men are her snaky but sexy boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), and Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a grim young lawyer (and early childhood playmate) introduced to her by her dithery matchmaking mother (Gemma Jones). Although Bridget herself is no fashion plate, Darcy makes a disastrous first impression by wearing a silly looking reindeer sweater. 

A glib, elusive womanizer, Daniel elicits the same hooded-eyed Mephistopholean slipperiness in Mr. Grant that Woody Allen discovered and used so effectively in ''Small-Time Crooks.'' By lowering his eyelids and adopting a faintly supercilious tone of voice, Mr. Grant expertly adjusts his stock screen persona from the ingenuous, girly-boy stumblebum of movies like ''Notting Hill'' into a duplicitous, testosterone-driven lothario. 

The joke behind Mr. Firth's Darcy is that the same actor played a version of a similar character, Mr. Darcy, in a television mini-series of ''Pride and Prejudice.'' Here again, Mr. Firth is the stiff-backed Mr. Right whose wonderfulness is revealed by degrees as he peels away layers of formality to bare the sensitive soul beneath his forbidding but handsome (despite sartorial misfires) exterior. 

The movie, directed by Sharon Maguire from a screenplay by Ms. Fielding, Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis, begins with a blitz of fast-cut, witty observations and short satirical takes on Bridget, her friends, the London dating scene and the inner workings of her publishing house. The velocity leaves you almost breathless. The barrage continues for the first half of the film, after which it relaxes into a standard-issue will-she-or-won't-she-get-the-guy romantic comedy of crossed signals, misunderstandings and last-minute saves. What began as a tartly witty evisceration of the feverish single-but-looking state of mind (a scene of Bridget's being regarded condescendingly by people she calls ''smug marrieds'' is especially withering) turns into a variation of Cinderella. 

An undernourished subplot follows the separation of Bridget's parents and her mother's humiliating affair with a sleazy home-shopping network pitchman who enlists her as his assistant. 

Don't expect ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' to deliver any searing revelations about the human condition. Even as a do's and don'ts resource about the dating life, the wisdom it dispenses is questionable. What it is is a delicious piece of candy whose amusing package is scrawled with bons mots distantly inspired by Jane Austen. So was ''Clueless,'' now already six years old. ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is the best and smartest film of its kind since then.