It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a thirtysomething singleton without a boyfriend (or at least a sport-fuck), must be in want of one.
If that sounds like Jane Austen with a vulgar modern twist, welcome to Bridget Jones’s Diary. Based on Helen Fielding’s v. v. popular novel and directed by Fielding pal and first-time director Sharon Maguire, the film is part Pride and Prejudice, part coarse email-age sex farce, and part quirky Brit-com. And for the most part, it’s funny as hell.
The first thing you’ll notice is that American actress Renée Zellweger plays the titular British singleton. The second thing you’ll notice is how little that matters. Zellweger, fleshing out her performance both figuratively (she affects a near-perfect accent) and literally (she gained over twenty pounds for the role), blends in so seamlessly with the cast of English Austen-adaptation veterans that she makes herself seem like the natural choice.
The film follows a year in Bridget’s life, starting with her New Year’s resolution to “take total control of my life and become perfect modern woman.” Control, however, is not something with which Bridget has ever been familiar. She smokes and drinks incessantly, swears like a stevedore, and obsesses over every one of those extra pounds. In her diary she’s smart and witty, but she has a hard time showing it as a public speaker in her job at a publishing house (there’s a funny little scene featuring cameos by controversial authors Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer). Then there’s the excruciating ordeal of patronizing comments from “smug marrieds,” couples who huddle together at dinner parties and ask Bridget if she’s getting any.
When she starts getting naughty emails from her dashing rogue of a boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant, for once not a bundle of stammering hesitancy), Bridget takes the bait. She’s happy and sexually satisfied for a change, but she suspects that Daniel is too good to be true. Unfortunately, her only other immediate option is the rude, socially inept lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a man prone to wearing reindeer sweaters and making nasty remarks about Bridget within her presence. I doubt I’m giving anything away by saying that Bridget and Darcy spend much of the film overcoming their respective pride and prejudice.
Writers Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis, working with Fielding in adapting her book, infuse the film with sharp wit and often hilarious situations (like the “tarts and vicars” party), and Maguire directs with a keen sense of comic timing. For the first half hour, the film does more than bounce off Austen’s plot; it carries off the modern translation, carrying you along on that giddy rush you get from hearing snappy dialogue and dry ironic humor delivered as only the British can do it.
Too bad the smart script and direction aren’t above stooping to Ally McBeal-level zaniness at times. The subplot involving Bridget’s parents occasionally comes close to overdoing the quirkiness (Gemma Jones, who nabs a few of the best early lines, has an affair with an orange-skinned man from the Home Shopping Channel), but Bridget herself is guilty of the worst Ally moments. Yes, she’s imaginative and unconventional, but please. Do we really need to see a shot of her body being prodded by wild dogs after she says she feels like being eaten by wild dogs? Does she really need to run semi-naked into the snowy streets at one point?
Overall, though, the film is a winner. If Bridget Jones ends up being the perfect modern woman, it’s because she’s an imperfect modern woman who asks only to be loved just as she is. Bridget Jones’s Diary is one you can enjoy reading without feeling guilty.
(3/4)