Bridget Jones's Diary

By John Marriott - AOL review 

Bridget Jones’s Diary is very very funny indeed. A mixture of big, amusing moments and quick asides (both verbal and visual), it plays down the brooding introspection of Bridget, turning even it into a further source of fun. This I know, not because I read the book, but because I watched the film in the company of two young ladies whose lifestyles (at home yearning for a man, with only fags, red wine, a good book and Frasier on the telly for company) are similar to Bridget’s and who were about to be interviewed for TV. 

Certainly as an upbeat romantic comedy, Bridget Jones’s Diary is the most accomplished example in ages. Beginning with Bridget’s mother’s turkey-curry Christmas party (Bridget: ‘I call him uncle, even though he gropes my arse’), and following Bridget through her tatty-flat and autopilot office routine in London, to her intense emotional muddle caused by her fancying the boss (Hugh Grant) and being confusingly drawn to Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a family friend she dislikes, the movie is lifted by crisply-timed comedy, inventive, punchy set-ups (literally in one scene, where Bridget’s two suitors brawl while singing Happy Birthday), and an enchanting performance from Renée Zellweger. Whether playing Bridget as dopey and girlish or grown-up and in charge, the star always makes sure we know the needy lady is nice. 

She is matched in excellence by both Grant, gifted at suggesting there is something less pleasant beneath a charming veneer, and Firth, the comic (and sometimes poignant) epitome of the repressed, inarticulate upper middle-class Englishman. Like Bridget, Mark has a hole in his life, and the sadness of this – as well as the sense that he is a prisoner of himself - is highlighted economically by the warmth, spontaneity and chattiness of the relationship between Bridget and her boss. These are three performances which are just brimming with life. Look out for the blue soup.