Bridget Jones's Baby

Dir: Sharon Maguire

2016

*

I was never in Helen Fielding's target audience, I disliked and loathed her two Bridget Jones adaptations respectively and I still can't quite believe she has been nominated for British Book of the year (1997), the Writers Guild of America (2002), the BAFTA award for Best Screenplay (2002), the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for best Screenplay (2013), The Peter Sellers Award for Comedy (2016), was named in the Sunday Time's list of 'Britain's 500 Most Influential People' and was voted as 29th most influential person in British Culture in a BBC poll. The Guardian newspaper named Bridget Jones’s Diary as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century. If that is true then we are doomed as a race. Bridget Jones's Baby isn't based on a book by Fielding although she did co-write the script (aspects of the story are based very loosely on columns she wrote for The Independent in 2005), it is really down to the author and the greedy/creatively redundant production companies who hoped that enough time has elapsed that people would have forgotten just how awful Bridget Jones: The Edge of reason actually was. Forget the books, the films are where the money is at, just churn out a flimsy and rather familiar script and 'hey presto', profit. I bloody worked too, but then of course it did, mainstream audiences will watch anything vaguely familiar, tell them it's funny and they will laugh, tell them it's sad and they'll cry, and so on. I often wondered just who the two previous films were made for, I know that everyone I know who liked both the books and the films have certainly grown out of them and I can't see people either in their early thirties or early forties liking it. People over fifty will watch anything but surely the kids will reject this well past-its-sell-by-date rubbish? Hugh Grant has some integrity at least, and he was in Did You Hear About the Morgans? Patrick Dempsey seems to be the totty of choice among forty somethings these days and played characterless billionaire perfectly, the only way a characterless millionaire can. Colin Firth disappoints me greatly, although it doesn't look like he's having much fun throughout the whole ordeal and I'm guessing it was easy money. Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones is different this time round, she had to be as both she and Zellweger are older but this isn't handled particularly well in terms of character, the changes make her someone else and the similarities are no longer convincing. The comment on the state of contemporary media falls quite flat as the story adopts many of the terrible ideas it fails to ridicule and makes itself look old and outmoded in the process. Nearly every social situation explored is unbelievable, like it's all been written by someone who hasn't experienced any of what they are writing about. The Ed Sheeran cameo is horrible, just horrible. Emma Thompson (who wrote the screenplay for 1995's big film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) was brought in to co-write the script that had gone through years of problems, one can only wonder what she brought to the story (probably the small part she had in it) but you have to wonder how it is that this is the best they could come up with after all these years? The 'whose the father?" story is old and weak, her flat is now worth double what it was in 2004 making her a millionaire and once more the poster makes Zellweger/Jones look like a blow-up sex doll, one with a slow puncture. Horrible. Hate it. Make it stop.

Bridget Jones's Diary

Dir: Sharon Maguire

2001

**

Bridget Jones's Diary, based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Helen Fielding, is a modern adaption of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice but with a contemporary (and contemptible) twist. The question one has to ask is whether there are women who are like Bridget Jones in real life? There probably are, but how many of them would admit to being happy about the comparison? I know quite a few women who read the book when it came out, half liked it and the other half loathed it. The ones that loathed it passed it off as unrealistic and ridiculous clap-trap and the ones that liked it all seemed to fear that they were either like or could turn into a Bridget Jones type character. I get the fear of being single in your early thirties, it is just the insulting stereotyping that I don't understand. Also, why like something you technically don't like? I'm clearly overthinking it but then I would argue that many people who like this nonsense under-think a lot of the rubbish they watch. Pride and Prejudice is a classic, much of its content can translate into today's way of life but a lot of it can't and for me Bridget Jones's Diary just doesn't make any sense. As a character she is terribly written, her persona constantly contradicting her actions and the story's narration (as is written in the diary). The script is awful, the awkward scenes are excruciating, I know they're supposed to be but they are excruciating in the wrong sort of way. Having Colin Firth as Bridget's 'Mr Darcy' is a bit of a cheap shot, given Firth's famous portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the popular 1995 TV adaptation of Austen's Pride and Prejudice - a clear influence, but I suppose it was something of a coup for Fielding and her fans. Firth and Hugh Grant (who also stared in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in Ang Lee's 1995 film) pulled in the punters and having Richard Curtis's name down as a screenplay co-author (really, how much input did he actually have?) certainly got people's attention, particularly as he and Grant were seen as a hit team following Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. I think what I find most contemptible about the story is just how lucky and successful Bridget Jones is, while all she can do is moan about how unlucky she is. I found it impossible to warm to her. I hate all the Home Counties stuff, the fact she acts like no thirty-two year old acts and lives in what would be a million pound flat if it were real. I don't understand why Renée Zellweger was cast as Bridget (actually I do, Jerry Maguire), I can think of many other actors better suited, I don't really care that she's American but I can think of a few British Actors who would have been better. How she was nominated for an Oscar is anyone's guess, slow year I suppose. I liked Colin Firth's performance but always felt he was too good for the film, it is a confused load of nonsense that I think women should reject. If you don't agree the film is confused then I would draw your attention to the film's two big cameos, Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer, I can't help but think it is trying to please everyone but pleases no one, not those concentrating anyway.