Bridget Jones’ Baby: Keeps you entertained
FILM: Bridget Jones' Baby
CAST: Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Celia Imrie
DIRECTOR: Sharon Maguire
Two sequences stand out in this chapter of the titular heroine's existential angst that author Helen Fielding birthed as a bestselling chick-lit novel in 2001: the first where the Brit singleton talks tenderly to her unborn baby during a tummy scan by gynaecologist Dr Rawlings (Emma Thompson).
The second where her legal beagle old flame tells her he'd love the baby anyway even if it wasn't his. For these scenes alone, your reviewer is prepared to forgive the foul-mouthed references to private parts, sex and such like.
Though not Jones's colleagues who goad her towards hedonism and promiscuity. Since Daniel (Hugh Grant) Cheever, her womanising lover/boss from "Diary" the prequel to 2004's "The Edge of Reason", is presumed dead and Mr Darcy is unhappily married to another woman. Does "Baby" chronicle a menage a trois between Bridget (Renee Zellweger, winsome as usual), Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, smashing) and American billionaire Jack Quant (Patrick Dempsey, dashing) who may or may not be responsible for the aforementioned pregnancy?
Nope. He's just a dreamboat who was good enough for a one night stand post a rock concert and copious amounts of drink not to speak of Bridget's so-called best friend who eggs her on to "have sex with the first man she meets".
Do you have to be a Victorian to disapprove? We were not amused even though we laughed uproariously during several other scenes. We sorely missed John Lennon's Beautiful Boy but we did sigh during the dreamy, dancing cheekto-cheek songs studding the soundtrack; it must be said though, the melodies are awesome, the lyrics awful.
But you, gentle reader, will be bowled over by Jack's chivalry while invoking Prince Charming and Cinderella's glass slipper. Bridget is far from the oppressed little sister who's condemned to a life of drudgery by her envious stepsisters. She has a dream job as a TV news producer – until a newly recruited bunch of ageist hipsters replace hard news with powder-puff pieces.
It doesn't help that Bridget's new boss is a sharklike over-made-up woman who drops her aitches and Bridget with alacrity after she slip-ups on the job. But that to my mind is small change compared to the Principal Problem: Bridget isn't sure who the father is!
Will the franchise end with this trilogy? I think not. A fourth instalment might be in the offing with Daniel's return to the land of the living.