Bridget Jones's Diary

Bridget Jones's Diary; romantic comedy, UK / USA / France, 2001; D: Sharon Maguire, S: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Celia Imrie, James Faulkner, Salman Rushdie

The slightly overweight Bridget Jones (32) meets lawyer Mark on the New Year's Eve party of her mother, but writes him off as "mommy's boy". Bridget works in a small agency where she quickly gets the attention of her boss Daniel who lands in bed with her. He doesn't really love her for real, and things get worse when Bridget finds a naked women in his apartment. She breaks up with him, quits her job and finds work as a quirky TV news reporter. She again meets Mark who enables her breakthrough interview with his client, a Kurdish human rights promoter. Mark even has a fight with Daniel and gets Bridget's heart when she discovers that Daniel slept with his fiancee.

Renee Zellweger delivered arguably the best performance of her career in the dream role of the sympathetic, slightly overweight, clumsy blond in the bitter-sweet comedy "Bridget Jones's Diary", that rightfully secured her place as a major movie star. Essentially, the story is actually a simple ode to unpopular outsiders with a few grotesque moments (i.e. after another failed relationship, Bridget is watching a lion mating with a lioness on TV) and not especially inventive style. But it's a shrill fun throughout. Filled with numerous wonderful jokes—every time a colleague looks at her cleavage, a threatening music starts playing in her head; while lying in bed with Hugh Grant's character Daniel (who is actually good as a bad guy), she energetically answers the phone: "Bridget Jones, wanton sex goddess, with a very bad man between her thighs... Mum... Hi."; after the start of her relationship, huge letters are displayed all over the town, stating how she lost weight and started drinking less; the book fair where Bridget in her mind almost mispronounces the author's name Fritz Herbert as "Tits Pervert"—"Bridget Jones" is an excellent comedy on female tenacity, annoying comments by narrow-minded people who measure everyone who is not perfect and the exciting search for true love. All the characters seem fresh, likeable and genuine, and their relationship problems less terrifying when we watch them handle it with humor. It's one of those movies where the main character is basically the entire film, but since Bridget is such an endlessly charming and lovingly wacky character, she fills out the entire film with ease, and also fills out the viewers' hearts with a major positive energy.

Grade:+++