Bridget is back

By David Edwards, The Mirror

They're back. No, not Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger. I'm talking about Bridget Jones's massive pants which get their first on-screen airing in three years. Cinema's most-notorious knickers are just one of the highlights of Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, a film that's by far and away the best British comedy of the year. Even better than the 2001 original, I guarantee you'll be blown away by its laugh-out-loud humour and utterly entranced by Zellweger as the hapless thirtysomething.

Following on from Bridget Jones's Diary, the serial singleton has been happily dating Mark Darcy (Firth) for six weeks - or "71 ecstatic shags" as she puts it. With the wilderness years behind her and her career as a hapless TV journalist going from strength to strength, she's secretly waiting for her new beau to pop the question. But things quickly unravel as she starts to suspect that shapely Rebecca (Jacina Barrett) is making a play for her new bloke. To make things worse, temptation rears its carefully-coiffured head when slimy Daniel Cleaver (Grant) arrives back on the scene determined to rekindle his romance with Jones.

The result is a film packed tighter than a pair of size 14 pants, with great one-liners and hilarious situations. One of the best comes when Jones is forced to parachute from an plane for a TV report. Paralysed with fear, she tells her producer: "I can't see anywhere soft to land." "How about your arse?" comes the unhelpful reply.

She has about as much luck on the ski slopes too. Also hilarious is a scene when Jones jets to Thailand for an assignment and unwittingly eats an omelette stuffed with magic mushrooms. She ends up in the bed of Cleaver, who utters the immortal line: "Oh God, I hope you're wearing the giant panties."

If the jokes shine, it's the performances that truly dazzle. Grant is perfect as a sleazy TV producer while Firth, who could never be accused of being a great actor, is utterly convincing as the charming but snooty Darcy. But it's Zellweger who is the real star, although until last year it was not certain she would take the role as it meant piling on the pounds to go from a size six to a 14. Well, thank God she did, because nobody else could bring such a winning mixture of vulnerability and haplessness to the role. As in the first film, Jones endlessly frets about her relationships, sometimes drinks too much and continually worries about her weight. In other words, we can't help but like her because she's just like us.

My only problems with the film are the same ones that can be levelled at most recent Working Title productions - namely a sometimes overly-quaint view of London and that "bugger" and "shag" dialogue that's been popping up in their scripts ever since Four Weddings And A Funeral.

Quibbles aside, this is a terrific was to spend an hour and a half. Laugh? I nearly snapped the elastic on my pants.