Bridget Jones's Diary DVD > Reviews > BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY (2001) [FILM ONLY REVIEW]

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	Renee Zellweger
Disadvantages:	Limp translation of book to film

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Sharon Maguire's BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY was released in 2001 after phenomenal success from Helen Fielding's book, as if anyone needs telling, of the same name. The book is an immensely enjoyable read, a book that throws you head first into someone else's secret diary of a life you can't help but squirm to as you relate to it all. The film, then, was much anticipated.

Bridget Jones is a thirty-onwards year old London disaster area. There should be a sign around her neck warning people that she smokes too much, drinks too much, often says too much, worries too much about her age, consumes too many calories to be at all happy about it, counts every minute of her flagging biological clock, every second of her life ticking by, hates herself and, worst of all, works in publishing. Think Uncle Buck as a woman who works in publishing. Uncle Buck as a woman who works in publishing without a boyfriend. At a Christmas party, her parents try to do their average-Joe daughter a favour by setting her up with Mr. Darcy, a rich but passionless lawyer she has known since they were kids. He snubs her without batting an eyelid and she in turn turns to Daniel, her boss, who reveals to her that he and Mr. Darcy have a history, which involves Mr. Darcy having stole his fiancé from him when they were in college together. Daniel goes on to lose interest In Bridget, Bridget changes job and Mr. Darcy reappears, not so passionless, it seems, after all. Daniel tells Bridget he wants her back, consequently he and Mr. Darcy declare war on each other and all of a sudden Uncle Buck has two boyfriends fighting over her.

What more can be said about BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY? I am sick of hearing about it, sick of the sight of it on supermarket shelves, exhausted at the sight of one hundred thousand Ciao reviews about it. So I shan't keep you, I only want to vent some more things you don't hear so often, not half as much as Renee Zellweger's performance as Bridget or how dashing Hugh Grant is as Daniel or how witty and quirky it all is.

BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY is not a good leap from book to film because what made the book excruciatingly funny is missing from the film and it is missing because it had to be. If not, we would have found ourselves sat in theatres all across the world listening to two, three, four hours of voice-over because it's Bridget's painfully recognisable diary entries that make the book so, if only once, enjoyable. The film, being a film, does not have this, it has snippets scratched in by the writers at random intervals according to the lightweight story, but they don't feel at all natural; enjoyable to listen to, of course, after all everybody enjoys listening to crap wisdom, but natural like in the book, natural like a diary would be?

Renee Zellweger plays a big part in the film's appeal. I recall there being a lot of tit-tattering about her being an American playing such a typically English gal and then the same tit-tatterers, whoever you are, applauding her performance in waves of elation. Whether this makes up for the incredible reviews it always gets, from redemptive reviewers, I just don't know. One thing is for sure, though, which is if she had stunk to high heaven like everyone had anticipated then nobody would have had half so much to say about it, it would have gotten less word-of-mouth publicity, it wouldn't have been so successful, one hundred thousand Ciao reviews wouldn't have been written about it and I wouldn't have written this, my own review, like a demented reactionary. Indeed, BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY is wholly dependent upon Zellweger, who famously gained weight for the film and worked undercover in some office somewhere in London to perfect her accent. She really is sensational. I don't know a lot of Americans but I've seen enough of their films, listened to enough of their music and eaten enough of their hamburgers to know none of them could possibly find anything American about her.

Super Zellweger aside, there really isn't much going for the film, difficult, as it is, to find any backbone to what is a sentimental story built upon circumstance, with distasteful music to eek out emotion and, last but not least, a disappointingly thin rapport between Super Zellweger and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. An hour and a half too much, an hour and a half too little.