Latest Bridget Jones offering filled with familiar humiliation
Ernest Goes to Jail. Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Bridget Jones gets old.
No shame — it happens to the best of us. But it’s been 12 years since the last Bridget Jones movie, and 15 since the first. Maybe the producers should have left well enough alone.
Instead we get the lovable London lonely heart (Renée Zellweger) turning 43 and attending the funeral of Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), the gadabout and one of two potential suitors in the first two movies. Given that the marriage of Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) is falling apart, that would seem to leave us with an open-and-shut plot.
No such luck. Bridget has a brief fling with Mr. Darcy, as well as an even briefer fling with dating guru Jack Quant (Patrick Dempsey). Finding herself pregnant, and refusing the amniocentesis that could decisively determine the father, she decides to string both men along until she can be sure.
Darcy is withdrawn and taciturn as always; any less emotion from Firth and you could call this Pride and Prejudice and Zombie. And Jack seems like a good match.
“On paper,” moans Bridget. “But falling in love doesn’t happen on paper.” Not unlike the screenplay for this movie.
Anyway, the paternal uncertainty allows Bridget ample opportunity to fall into mud puddles, misunderstand basic human social conventions and otherwise humiliate herself, all to an on-the-nose soundtrack that includes one song by Lily Allen with an unprintable title.