Review: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason


Bridget (a surprisingly charmless Renee Zellweger, once again with an inappropriate upper-class accent) is back in the sequel no one really needed. She’s happily shagging the awfully nice but frightfully dour Colin Firth, but suspects he might be involved with gorgeous co-worker Jacinda Barrett. It gets worse, when likeable cad Hugh Grant turns up, now a TV travelogue presenter whom Bridget’s boss wants to pair her up with on-screen. Wussy fist-fights, excursions into Thai prisons, copious amounts of cigarette smoke, unfortunate skiing incidents, and a lesbian kiss (woo-hoo!) ensue.


Bloated, very ordinary sequel to a not very entertaining film, this 2004 Beeban Kidron film is a tired re-tread, and occasionally really desperate. Film’s nadir finds Bridget in a Thai prison teaching local prisoners the words to Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’. An utterly tasteless moment. Only the scene-stealing Grant (appearing in a film that his character isn’t even really meant to be in, but he’s having fun anyway), and a surprisingly more comfortable Firth (whose character was stuffy in the first, but he played it like someone had just farted in his face) are any good. Barrett has charm but an underdeveloped character. Shame, hers is the most interesting role, even if I spotted the big twist a mile away). Zellweger is saddled with a character that I frankly didn’t like the first time around (she borders on detestable and unbelievably self-centred here, then again, I hated Scarlett O’Hara too!). Her constantly smoking friends are thankfully given short shrift here, and Jim Broadbent might as well not have even turned up.


Not funny, not charming, and only intermittently watchable. The screenplay is by Andrew Davies, Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”, writer-director of “Love Actually”), Adam Brooks, and Helen Fielding, from her novel.

 

Rating: C

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