Bridget Jones

A movie by Sharon Maguire

With Renee Zellwegger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and others

Christina says:

Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is over 30, single, and fights her frustration caused by those two facts with alcohol and voracious eating. Her mother (Gemma Jones) tries to set her up with every bachelor she can get hold of. The latest one is recently divorced human rights lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), but the first impression they get of each other is less than favorable. Bridget is after her boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), and after they went to bed together she hears wedding bells. But before she finds her "Mr. Right" she has to master a number of highly embarrassing situations that are laugh-out-loud funny as long as you don’t think them through.

I admit I have a problem with the characters women today are supposed to regard as role model. Not that I’m not grateful for every movie heroine who hasn’t just jumped out of the supermodel mold and has such control over her life that it makes you sick (except for the tiny problem that provides the movie with a story and is usually solved by finding the perfect man). But the only alternative way of being a woman as seen in movies and on TV seems to be the way of Bridget Jones or Ally McBeal, supposed to serve as identification for the "normal" women with all their "weaknesses", and after the laughter died away I sit there and ask myself "Is that all there is?"

Helen Fielding’s story follows Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice almost as closely as the movie CLUELESS followed Jane Austen’s Emma. Therefore it was a stroke of genius to cast Colin Firth as Mark Darcy. From his tortured arrogant looks to the unwilling declaration of his love for Bridget everything is perfect. Hugh Grant is a worthy successor of Austen’s sly villain Wickham. If he gives up his stumbling and stammering act I can bear him remarkably well. Between the two of them stands Renée Zellwegger who makes the most of her part. Unfortunately Helen Fielding abandoned her model Jane Austen when it came to her central female character. Bridget Jones needs an injection of Elizabeth Bennet. Where Elizabeth throws Mr. Darcy’s pathetic proposal back in his face, Bridget just stands there grinning like an imbecile, repeating blissfully ‘He likes me the way I am.’ If his repulsive power-feminist girl friend hadn’t interfered she might even have accepted him on the spot, thus prematurely ending the movie.

As I mentioned before Bridget has heaps of likeable mistakes and stumbles into embarrassing situations that might happen to most people. You can suffer with her, laugh with her and about her, but except for the fact that she gets her guy in the end there is nothing to be happy about with her. An "ordinary" woman we are supposed to identify with can apparently only be totally incompetent in her job and her private life, and if she is successful it has to be because of her physical attributes or it just happens to her accidentally.

The movie was entertaining and well cast, but left a lot to be desired.

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Christina Gross

Last changes: 01/04/03