Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason Review

"Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason" reviews

Movie

Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-03-09 00:51:59

Rating

1/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is further proof that gratuitous sequels will one day mark the death of cinema as we know it.

Story

The story arc of Bridget Jones, Part Deux is identical to the first, except for one little detail: Instead of trying to find a man, Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) worries about losing the one she's got. She has already climbed her highest mountain and dreamed her impossible dream, she has her soulmate Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) all wrapped up in a little bow, and yet the movie keeps going. And going. In the short span of four weeks together, Bridget and Darcy have already become the couple that don't speak. She stares at him while he sleeps. He chastises her for it grumpily, she apologizes, and then she freaks out thinking that he will break up with her. Rinse and repeat. His slinky secretary (Jacinda Barrett) flirts ominously. Bridget feeds her insecurities by stuffing her face, drinking like a sailor, and then slurring insults at whatever passing character will provide the maximum of shame and embarrassment. It's charming, really. Hugh Grant rears his scaly head as former paramour Daniel Cleaver, and a song and dance routine breaks out in a Thai prison. I wish I was kidding.

Acting

The massive appeal of the character from the books and the first film isn't that difficult to understand. Bridget isn't the smartest girl or the prettiest girl or the thinnest girl, but she still wins Prince Charming. She's sweet though, and she's funny, and she offsets Darcy's stuffiness in a neatly symmetrical, opposites attract way. But if the point of Bridget the First is finding the character's attractiveness within, the point of the sequel is that Bridget is fat and stupid and the object of our ridicule.

Zellweger famously put 25 pounds back on to reprise the role, but this time it seems closer to 50. Bridget's fat is zoomed in on, enlarged, jiggled, fetishized, and dragged through pig dung. And her unabashed quest to humiliate herself in public knows no bounds. None of this is exactly Zellweger's fault--the screenplay is terrible, for starters--and yet all of it is. She decided to take on a sequel with a character that had absolutely nowhere to go, and she doesn't muster the energy needed to save her this time. Even the acclaimed, Oscar-nominated English accent sounds a little shaky.

Grant and Firth are caddishness and constipation personified, but the stereotypes are way too easy. Firth's Darcy is depicted as a saint, of course, but one begins to wonder what sickness lurks within a man who watches idly as his girlfriend humiliates herself so brazenly. Grant's Cleaver, with his thirst for random conquest, is at least explainable. But Darcy seems to crave a woman who will need a quick hook at every social event, and a bib at every restaurant. Maybe it's not the slinky secretary Bridget should be worried about, it's the bag lady feeding the pigeons. On a positive note, Jacinda Barrett is, hands down, the greatest actress who has ever emerged from MTV's The Real World.

Direction

Beeban Kidron, who directed the hideous drag melodrama To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, clearly doesn't get the Jones phenomenon. She ratchets up the camp factor well past tolerable, pushes it into misguided slapstick, and culminates in nails-to-the-chalkboard shrillness in the Thai prison. And making matters worse, not a shred of effort appears to have been expended to make the whole undertaking any more original. Entire scenes are repeated from the first movie. The ''Ugly Sweater'' scene. The ''Big Underwear'' scene. The ''Fight'' scene. And so on. This isn't the first time a sequel has been a glorified remake; Desperado and Terminator 2 spring to mind. But at least those movies had some shred of ambition. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason aspires to nothing and succeeds handsomely.

Bottom Line

Hardcore fans will flock anyway. If you've haven't seen the first movie then this isn't the place to start. And if you have seen the first movie, this sequel is an insult to your intelligence.

Movie

BRIDGET JONES: EDGE OF REASON

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-25 21:37:36

Provider

Review

When we last saw her, Bridget Jones had finally got her man and was set to throw off the shackles of spinsterhood. Now you'd have thought that she could manage that, but, then again, this is Bridget we're talking about.

Opening some "six weeks, four days and seven precious hours" since she landed herself "one flawless boyfriend" in the shape of snobby lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), this outing finds our heroine (Renée Zellweger) doing pretty well for herself. Work is going well - despite a disastrous skydiving incident - her friends are all still getting her drunk on a regular basis and life with Mark is heavenly. But a new woman (Jacinta Barrett) in his life, an old flame (Hugh Grant) and Bridget's own insecurities are about to throw several spanners in the works.

Now there's no denying that the original Bridget Jones movie was loads of fun. Zellweger was a revelation as Helen Fielding's famous singleton and Hugh Grant was able to shake of his bumbling romantic lead image virtually overnight. But while The Edge Of Reason keeps some of those characteristics, it's definitely lost some of it's charm.

Great actors such as Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones, as Bridget's Mum and Dad, are reduced to virtual bystanders, while too many jokes are rehashed and repeated. Also, instead of being a symbol of the 'modern woman', Bridget herself is reduced to a hapless stooge who simply stumbles from one disaster to another.

That said the film does have it's amusing moments. The scene in a Thai jail where Bridget teaches the inmates a Madonna dance routine will raise a laugh and the return of Grant's predatory Daniel Cleaver is certainly a high spot, especially when he insults the cameoing Jeremy Paxman.

Yet, the nagging doubts remain: this is a let down. It lacks the sparkle which made the first Bridget Jones so vital and fresh, and without that this Diary isn't destined to be a best seller.