BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: sexual content, foul language

Rated:

Based on the best-selling British novel by the same name, whose primary plot was "loosely stolen" from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, Bridget Jones's Diary is a quirky comedy about life, love, and chaos. Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is in her thirties, twenty pounds overweight, and still single. The dreaded family gathering has rolled around for the Christmas holidays, and her perky mother (Gemma Jones) wants to introduce her to newly divorced Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, in a perfect reproduction of his "other" Darcy role). Bridget is never at her best when nervous. She fumbles with words, "smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and dresses like her mother." Or at least that's how Mark puts it to a family friend, never suspecting the target of his rant is within earshot.

Insulted by his allegations, Bridget makes up her mind to quit smoking and drinking and lose twenty pounds by summertime. She's bound and determined not to attend another family gathering without a boyfriend. Her eye is set on Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), her boss at the publishing house where she works. He's suave, sophisticated, and utterly charming. He's also a notorious womanizer, but little things like that don't matter in the long term. In her usual short-skirt trend, Bridget sets out to get his attention and succeeds. Subtle e-mail flirtations turn into dinner invitations and then fabulous nights spent together. Bridget is finally happy. She's found the perfect guy... but her path keeps crossing Mark's, along with his stuck-up partner at the law firm (Felicity Montagu). He seems to hate Daniel with a vile passion, and the emotion is reciprocated. Daniel says it has to do with hard feelings over an old relationship, implying Mark had the brazen nerve to get fresh with his fiancée.

Then things start falling apart. Daniel shows himself to be a cad and Bridget must deal with utter humiliation in the working field. She goes from one misadventure to the other and then, strangely, discovers that she might have been pursuing the wrong man all along. In the meantime her parents are going through marriage problems and her plans to quit drinking haven't quite come through yet. As you can see, Bridget is only a very loose interpretation of Lizzie Bennett. She's also completely likable, despite being altogether secular in her views on men and intimacy. She makes stupid mistakes while giving speeches. She falls down a fireman's pole instead of sliding down it and gives national television a wonderful view up her skirt. Her attempts at cooking turn out "the most magnificent slop" any of her friends have ever eaten. Altogether she's human and that's what makes the audience like her. You can't help being fond of Daniel either, even though he is a complete jerk and Darcy... well, Mark lingers in the background looking utterly serious but ultimately winning over the girl with his dazzling smile.

Alas, this film is very raw in uncut form. There is an edited version available but there's so many things offensive about Bridget Jones's Diary, one wonders what they managed to salvage. First is the appalling language. I lost count of f-words, but they seem to be Daniel's favorite term; Bridget's journalist friend also uses them freely. Then there are several abuses of Jesus' name, mild uses of deity, and general profanity, along with British slang (including their version of the f-word). There's some mild violence -- Daniel and Mark get into a fistfight in the street. They slug and kick one another, are hurled through windows, and wreck a restaurant. (This is all played comically, and is one of the funniest scenes in the film.) Sexual content is very high simply for implications, innuendo, conversation, and jokes. Men like to grope women's backsides. There are several scenes of implied sexual content (I won't go into details), Bridget is shown in her underwear on several occasions (she goes running out into the snow wearing a jacket and pair of panties, much to the horror of passerby). She wears a skimpy "bunny suit" to a family reunion, since she didn't get the memo that they'd decided not to go with a "Tart and Vicar" theme. The camera gets a view up her skirt as she falls down the poll, smashes into it, and tumbles to the ground. (She rewinds the tape numerous times, humiliated.)

She and Daniel are shown in bed on various occasions but the camera always pans out. They fool around on the floor after their first date and he mocks her for wearing "granny" underwear. Her mother has an affair with someone on television. Bridget wears a lot of short skirts, low tops, and is seen in her bra several times (once with a sheer top over black underclothes). For about twenty seconds in a flashback we see a naked couple in a sexual position (a man walked in to find his wife with another man). It really is too bad because the premise is really quite cute and the mocking look at a modern-day Jane Austen is only enhanced by two actors known for their roles in adaptations of her book. This could have been really good, but instead they ruined it with absolutely horrible language, an obsession with sex, and too much skin.