A Dear Diary

By Jeff Huston

Readers often e-mail me with accusatory gripes of my being too harsh (in their eyes) on movies like Runaway Bride, Miss Congeniality, and even the recent Someone Like You. Well if I am, it’s only because they’re not even close to being as good a movie as Bridget Jones’s Diary. 

First-time director Sharon Maguire doesn’t reinvent any cinematic wheels with her adaptation of the British literary phenomenon, but her film does ride as smooth as a brand new Benz. Bridget Jones’s Diary gently coasts over potential genre speed bumps with a shock absorber of genuine empathy. It is a welcome treat that successfully follows formula because it has the sophistication and honesty to reach beyond that formula and grab hold of something real. 

Rare is the romantic comedy that wallows in a feel-good cuteness while maintaining such an authentic aura. Bridget Jones’s Diary mixes fantasy and reality with uncommon ease, even believability. It takes the fantasizing angst of Ally McBeal and tones it down about one hundred notches. It takes male-bashing stereotypes and applies them specifically rather than universally. And when Bridget whines, rather than wanting her to grow up and deal, we feel she has earned the pity party. That, indeed, is exactly what this entire film does – it earns its indulgences by making them the icing rather than the cake. 

The story isn’t remotely new, though some of its specifics are nice down-to-earth diversions from the packaged studio norm. Perhaps most notably is that rather than offering up another gorgeous cover girl ala Julia Roberts or Ashley Judd, the perky starlet Renee Zellweger puts on twenty pounds to stay true to the novel’s heroine – a frumpy average Everywoman that isn’t about to grace the cover of a woman’s magazine (Harper’s Bazaar’s recent last-minute shallow scrapping of the chunky Renee from their cover is proof of that). 

Bridget overeats, chain-smokes, and doesn’t think twice about pounding down a few at the pub. How refreshing is it to see the all-too-human trait of indulging in the things that make you feel undesirable so as to overcome the depression of feeling undesirable? That’s much more relatable and entertaining than the health obsessing leads we normally see; Hollywood may be that fixated, but most non-L.A. are not. To boot, a brief montage including an exercise bike failure hysterically satirizes that manic compulsion. 

Brit natives nearly screamed bloody murder when Texan Renee Zellweger was cast as their generational icon, but it’s hard imagining Zellweger not melting their bitter hearts as completely as she does ours. Her impeccable British accent (achieved with the help of Gwyneth Paltrow’s dialect coach) is her saving grace, but her kindred spirit with Bridget is truly the film’s foundation. From the moment she busts out in her impassioned lip-synced living room concert of “All By Myself”, Zellweger wins our hearts. It’s an early defining moment not only for her performance but also for the film itself. Director Sharon Maguire uses one of the most overused clichés of the genre to establish her character and film in an instant. How deftly brilliant. 

The film itself follows a calendar year, spanning from one New Year’s Eve to the next. In that time, the single 32-year-old bordering on “spinster” Bridget resolves to take control of her life, deciding to record the would-be transformation in a diary. Many scenes are layered by a journal notation voice-over, concisely telling the story while maintaining that diary-reading vibe. 

The primary focus ends up being, of course, the pursuit of finding and marrying the perfect man. Bridget embodies the conflicts of the contemporary woman who is expected to be content within herself through independently having it all, all the while harboring the girlhood dream of marrying Prince Charming that is counter to the previous expectation. The end-result has a hilarious and adorable post-modern charm. 

Example entry: “All in all, will develop inner poise and sense of self as mature woman of substance, complete without boyfriend – as best way to obtain boyfriend.” Imagine Calista Flockhart’s poutiness delivering that line and it makes you cringe, but Zellweger’s determined sincerity is endearing. 

Bridget’s romantic escapades involve two different blokes. One personifies everything she loathes about men, which is exactly why she fantasizes about him. It’s her boss Daniel Cleaver, played handsomely by Hugh Grant. Thankfully abstaining from his patented neurotic ticks and stutters, Grant permeates Cleaver with as suave and sexy a persona as you’ll find this side of James Bond. In doing so, he makes plausible the normally inexplicable propensity of women to fall for good-looking guys who are in reality nothing but jerks. And credit Zellweger’s innocent allure for making equally plausible Cleaver’s strong attraction to her that causes him to rethink his selfish patterns. 

If Cleaver is the playboy, then Mark Darcy is his opposite. As brooding as Cleaver is charismatic, Darcy has all the magnetism of a bored corpse. Yet actor Colin Firth (A&E's Pride and Prejudice) lets Darcy’s honest feelings eventually slip through the façade with subtle yet sweet nervousness. One of these two ends up being the right one, and it doesn’t take too long to figure out which. But what’s truly amazing is how Maguire and her cast expedite the growth of these relationships without the quick process ever seeming forced. 

In particular, the Bridget/Darcy angle is impressively evolved. Though not given near the amount of screen time as the Bridget/Cleaver thread, Zellweger and Firth create this soft, intense chemistry that makes us believe one little conversation (guided by cunningly crafted dialogue) can turn their emotions (and ours) on a dime. In most films this relationship would be disgustingly instantaneous, but here it is entirely natural. The entire film basks in that type of magic, showcasing a creative synergy between script, cast, and director that is to be coveted. 

Bridget Jones’s Diary so easily could’ve been yet another watered-down chick flick. But with the proven writers/producers of Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill at the helm, what we get is a film that respects our intellect while playing to our fancies rather than coasting on the basest feminine stereotypes possible. Men are also offered male romantic leads so dimensional that they could be the center of their own movies (a trait I treasure), plus Bridget harbors many gender-universal anxieties, too. 

While not without its faults (or at the very least, genre clichés), Bridget Jones’s Diary remains as close to perfect as it possibly can be in terms of what it’s clearly trying to be. It’s a movie so whimsical yet true that you can’t help but wish that movies could be hugged because you just want to wrap your arms around this one. I could nitpick any number of things here, but to paraphrase Mark Darcy, “I like this movie, just the way it is.”