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A dear 'Diary'
[Photo: Miramax Film]
Renee Zellweger’s Bridget Jones falls for her boss, a cad played by Hugh Grant. |
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 12, 2001
Renee Zellweger will make you smile with her flawed heroine, Bridget Jones.
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The nicest thing anyone does for Bridget Jones is tell her she's loved just the way she is. I've got a crush on Helen Fielding's literary creation, now the subject of a charming film, for what she isn't.
Bridget isn't the typical female movie romantic. You can believe her troubles connecting with lovers, unlike sleek, chic Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock trying to convince us for two hours that nobody wants them.
Renee Zellweger does the bunny hop in Bridget Jones’s Diary.
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Bridget's a breath of fresh air tainted with cigarette smoke, just one of her unshakable habits. Food and booze pass her lips as often as bluntness is blurted out. Men come and go even easier. She's an improbably sexy frump, this generation's Georgy Girl.
Renee Zellweger added 20 pounds and British intonation to her crinkly-eyed fragility that made Jerry Maguire melt, making Bridget Jones a delightfully crude romantic. Perhaps too rough around the edges to be considered Everywoman, yet more average, more real than movies usually allow. Zellweger is perfect in the role, unless linguists detect some picky flaw in her accent.
The book and movie cover a year in Bridget's unfulfilled life, beginning with a New Year's home-alone binge and revealing resolutions. She begins a diary charting her struggles with calories, nicotine and loneliness. Her parents are supportive, mom (Gemma Jones) by arranging blind dates and dad (Jim Broadbent) by staying out of the way.
One thing Bridget pledges against is falling for rakish Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), her boss at a London publishing house. Of course, that's exactly what she does after a series of suggestive fashion statements and e-mail flirting. Grant plays against type from his first appearance, with a smarmy expression setting a caddish tone for the performance. It's an inspired portrait of a debonair heel, at once comical and hissable.
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Novel's charm reduced by half on-screen
Helen Fielding's best-selling novel Bridget Jones's Diary was successful on two counts: Its narrator is disarmingly likable, and its plot is hilariously farcical. |
An affair with Daniel ebbs and flows until it runs dry. Bridget quits her job in a rare display of independence, eventually landing a job as a TV reporter. Career success doesn't fill that void in her heart, though. Meanwhile, mother is dallying with a jerk of her own, father is depressed, and a priggish childhood friend, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), shows more concern for Bridget than his words suggest, despite his engagement to snooty Natasha (Embeth Davidtz).
Fielding's plot owes its inspiration to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, or any of her out-of-sync heroines, for that matter. Different sense of time, same sensibilities. Feminism emerges from unlikely sources. True love is always one reconsidered word away, although selfishness makes it seem distant.
Director Sharon Maguire shows remarkable control of this material for a first-timer, with occasional lapses into overly obvious pop songs as her only rookie mistakes. Mostly, the film glides, even when it's doubling back on itself with Bridget's romantic relapses.
Hints of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly sneak into the good times, like a giddy child's fantasy coming true. Down times as a "singleton" dining with "smug marrieds" or publicly humiliating herself show Bridget for what she is: vulnerable, adorable, bursting with potential, if she'd only get her act together.
Screenwriter Andrew Davies knows Austen's mechanics from adapting Pride and Prejudice and Emma for television. Co-writer Richard Curtis knows contemporary romantic patter, evidenced by his Oscar-nominated script for Four Weddings and a Funeral. Together, they streamline Fielding's astutely humorous book into a brisk, bawdy 96 minutes. You may not think you can smile that long. Bridget Jones's Diary proves how easily it can be done.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Bridget Jones's Diary
- Grade: A
- Director: Sharon Maguire
- Cast: Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Embeth Davidtz
- Screenplay: Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies, Helen Fielding, based on Fielding's novel
- Rating: R; profanity, sexual situations, mild violence
- Running time: 96 min.
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