“Bridget” has flaws but is irresistible
and very funny

By Harper Barnes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Bridget Jones, that thoroughly modern old-fashioned girl, is simply hopeless, which may be why she's so hard to resist. Beneath the skin-products-deep facade of urban sophistication and resoluteness, this single, 30-something Londoner is so needy and has such low self-esteem that it's a wonder successful men who are literally as handsome as movie stars spend so much time pursuing her. 

They seem to find her irresistible for the same reason that her many fans among readers and moviegoers do: Beating beneath the layers of insecurity and subcutaneous pudge is a heart of gold. 

Or maybe it's just that smile, which Renee Zellweger fills with such joyous hope, hope that everything will be wonderful from now on out. Of course, it won't, or we wouldn't have a story. 

In "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," a sequel that's as good as the amusing original, "Bridget Jones's Diary," our ditzy Generation X Jane Austen is seemingly locked in love with barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). She adores him so much, and thinks so little of herself, that it doesn't take much to send her flying off into implacable jealousy. The mere presence in Mark's life of a leggy young colleague (Jacinda Barrett) is enough to turn Bridget simultaneously green and red, neither of which goes well with the pink she so is so tragically addicted to wearing. 

The romance is off and on and off again, and eventually Bridget finds herself in Thailand with the man she loves to hate, rotter Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). After a series of episodes I won't spoil by detailing them, she finds herself in a woman's prison in Bangkok, where she brings cheers to herself and dozens of inmates jammed into a single room by leading a rousing chorus of "Like a Virgin," only it comes out as "Like a Wirgin." 

The scene is quite funny, although hardly politically correct, given what we know about Third World lockups. It could only work in a movie this fluffy - "Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason" is so lightweight it makes "Legally Blonde" look like it should be shown on C-SPAN. Director Beeban Kidron speeds the plot along, and Bridget keeps rising from defeat to take on each new self-inflicted challenge. 

This is basically a movie that asks one question over and over again: How will Bridget screw things up this time? But we are inevitably charmed by her honesty, particularly when she is denouncing Darcy's stuffy, class-conscious upper-crust colleagues. And Zellweger is adept at slapstick, in great part because she doesn't seem afraid of looking like an ungainly fool and stuffing herself into the most god-awful clothes since the floppy era of the '70s. 

The movie has its flaws, a certain sameness of tone being the principal one, but the bottom line is, it's funny. At times, it's hilarious.