The flicks
The wait is finally over in more ways than one in BRIDGET JONES’ BABY, WITCH is a case of shriek,, and ye shall find
BRIDGET JONES’ BABY (M) Director: Sharon Maguire ( Bridget Jones’s Diary) Starring: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Emma Thompson, Shirley Henderson, Jim Broadbent Rating: **1/2
BRIDGET Jones is back after a decade-plus holiday from cinemas. Did you miss her?
Well, if you’ve forgotten all about 2004’s dreadful Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, it is more than likely her return is a welcome one.
After all, to this day, 2001’s delightful Bridget Jones’s Diary remains every bit an enjoyable Brit-com guilty pleasure as Love, Actually.
So where does Bridget Jones’ Baby sit in the wider scheme of things? Perhaps not all that surprisingly, it resides smack bang in the middle between its predecessors.
The opening act is regulation reunion stuff. While Bridget (once again played by Renee Zellweger) is now 43 years old, she is very much the same Ms Jones: no man, no plan and no foreseeable change on the near horizon. However, on the far horizon — remember that title — all kinds of changes are on the way.
If we fast-forward to the middle of the picture, Bridget is now pregnant, and not so sure about who the father might be. Two random trysts in relatively quick succession have left dashing dating-app billionaire Jack Quant (Patrick Dempsey) and long-lost love Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) as equally culpable candidates for possible parenthood.
Rather than sort out this snafu with a quick DNA test, our highly strung heroine keeps the guessing game going right up until the birth itself. The wait until we finally hear the pitter patter of little feet definitely goes on way too long here. Scenes padded out with piffling patter of little consequence push the total running time past the two-hour mark, which is usually asking too much of even the most brilliant movie comedies.
Though Bridget Jones’s Baby can definitely provoke the occasional hearty, well-earned laugh, sitting out the aftermath of one self-embarrassing stumble after another gets a tad dull after a while. And all that filler material means killer performances are not really possible. Zellweger is an efficient anchor for the movie and keeps the title character endearingly likeable when it counts. But there is a spark missing from her work that becomes truly noticeable whenever she is one-on-one with either of her leading men.
A restrained Firth and a relatively too-eager-to-please Dempsey more or less cancel one another out in terms of lasting impact. This leaves you wishing more scenes could have been cleared for a wonderful Emma Thompson, whose cynical bedside manner as Bridget’s incredulous doctor is a welcome distraction throughout. THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS (G) A likeable, lightweight animation for the whole family that gives an insight into what our pets get up to when no one’s home, coupled with a yarn about a needy Jack Russell and clueless Newfoundland who have become separated from their beloved owner. SULLY (M) This relives one of the greatest moments in aviation history, when Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger had to crash-land an Airbus A320 in the middle of the Hudson River after it struck a flock of geese, which disabled both the engines. In spitting distance of a bustling New York City, the plane landed with no fatalities. The film also reveals the ridiculous fight the hero pilot had to clear his name after deviating from his flight path. DON’T BREATHE (MA15+) In the best horror film of the year, three amateur burglars target a rundown house in an abandoned street in Detroit. But the solitary resident, an old blind man with a pile of cash, does not take kindly to unwanted guests and proceeds to make their life a living (barely) hell. NERVE (M) This starts out well following young, dumb, fearless players of the latest app-based tournament, where people do whatever their smartphone tells them to — in this case, an everescalating series of increasingly dangerous dares. Good stuff, until the end seriously loses its nerve. WAR DOGS (M) Based on the incredible true story of two average young Americans who stumbled into becoming arms dealers thanks to a loophole in the law. A truckload of semi-automatics to Baghdad? No problem. A cache of ammo to Afghanistan? Sure. SAUSAGE PARTY (MA15+) Certainly the dirtiest — and one of the funniest — films (animations) of the year sees a hot dog named Frank want nothing more than to be lodged within a bun named Brenda. Cue plenty of smut and sexual innuendo among food items. From the minds of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (think Pineapple Express, Superbad), need we say more?