Renée's in a Fielding of her own

By Mike Davies, The Birmingham Post - April 13, 2001

Helen Fielding's book - evolved from her newspaper column - wasn't the instant hit popular legend now believes. Not until its paperback publication - far easier for its target audience to read on the tube and bus - did Bridget's diarised panic take hold of a generation of young working women sharing the same neuroses about having both a career and a life, while living with the paranoia about the size of their bum.

Today, the gender opposite of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, it's a monumental international best-seller and Bridget, a sort of insecure female's Adrian Mole, has become an icon of the times.

So, when it was announced that Texan Renée Zellweger was going to play the nation's favourite singleton, there was predictable outrage. A Bridge too far indeed.

But while the accent's slightly plummier than you might have expected, any doubts that she's miscast last for all of what, five seconds. Plumped up to a respectably everyday size 12 (far better than the book's weight obsessive, anorexia suspect 8st), it's impossible to imagine anyone other than Zellweger as the chainsmoking, vodka/chardonnay glugging sex-starved thirtysomething Bridget, who despairs of ever joining the 'smug marrieds' given the emotional idiots that appear to comprise the entire male race.

The film, directed in uninspired but efficient manner by Fielding's mate Sharon Maguire, who was herself the model for Bridget's best friend Shazza, is pretty much faithful to the book.

Publishing company assistant Bridget embarks on an affair with her dashingly handsome sexy boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) only to find he's a love rat cad as well as a charmer and subsequently finds herself drawn to aloof barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) who her mum has been trying to fix her up with for ages.

Inevitably in a too short hour and a half, there's been cuts, shifts and changes to story and characters. Sadly, there's far too little of Bridget's mates, Shazza (Sally Phillips), Tom (James Callis) and Jude (Shirley Henderson) but at least in tackling her parents' marital troubles, the novel's confusing time share scam has been ditched in favour of having mum (Gemma Jones) become, not some senior citizen Rikki Lake, but a shopping channel hostess who runs off with its perma-tanned, lothario presenter.

You'll be glad to know though that the vicars and tarts scene with Bridget in bunny outfit remains intact, likewise the fireman's pole.

The screenplay was initially drafted by Fielding and Andrew Davies. However, the film's tone - and I daresay much of the comic business involving Grant, playing wonderfully against his loveable posh bumbler image, like a Hugh Grant impersonator doing a pastiche - is undoubtedly largely the responsibility of Richard Curtis, writer of Notting Hill and, of course Four Weddings And A Funeral with which it shares its opening word. Which means that it's both very funny (with great one liners and some killer visual throwaways, Zellweger's fitness cycle gag one of the best) and touchingly romantic, but also opens up a cynically tart vein.

A thoroughly entertaining chick flick date movie that men can enjoy without feeling like nancies, this is a passport to stardom for Zellweger and an affirmation that you don't have to look like a twig to have sex appeal.

It should safely keep the multiplexes packed well into the summer and, if nothing else, it's going to make big knickers this year's thong.