Well, guess who is back with a new bundle of trouble. Bridget Jones is once again gracing the screen after 12 years. Let's pop that bottle of Chardonnay! It's certainly better late than never.
Bridget Jones’s Baby
Starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth
and Patrick Dempsey
Directed by Sharon Maguire
At the ripe age of 43, Bridget Jones (a splendid as ever Renée Zellweger) -- our lovably clumsy, slightly overweight, chain-smoking and drink-like-a-pirate Brit gal -- has changed a lot over the past decade. In Bridget Jones's Baby, she is career-centric, has quit smoking and is living sans her Mister Right aka Mark Darcy. Things sadly didn't work out between the couple during their absence from the screen and Bridget is seen celebrating her birthday alone to sappy Celine Dion's music. But if we've learnt anything from watching the 2001 Bridget Jones's Diary and the 2004 sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, it's that our girl won't be moping in the singleton world for long.
Out is Hugh Grant's Daniel Cleaver and enter Patrick Dempsey's dating-site mogul Jack Qwant sitting in one corner of the new love triangle. On another, we have Bridget's old flame -- the ever-so-serious barrister Darcy, played by the dashing Colin Firth. Nobody seems to care about the fact that these men are more than 50 years old. They are still hot as hell and the entire cinema broke into girly squeals the moment they appeared on screen.
So after donning a playboy bunny costume to a formal gathering, sliding down a fireman pole to show her bum on live television and getting locked up in a Thai prison, what other sort of mayhem could Bridget land in? A series of one-night-stands sure does the trick. Bridget finds herself pregnant. And the problem is, she has no idea which man is the father. Mamma mia, here we go again!
And so begins Bridget's hilarious attempt with this unexpected bun in the oven. Her life is further complicated by the love triangle and her young, hipster boss taking control of the news office where she's serving as a producer. This film is a romcom we don't often see -- a middle-aged woman grappling with romance, career and being relevant in the 4.0 era. She's ditched her notebook to scribbling her diary entries in an iPad. She doesn't know who the bloke called Ed Sheeran is. Her friends are moving onto that family-and-kids stage in life. And Bridget is stuck in the middle of all that crazy limbo.
She is just like any of us. Old or young, we have one of those Bridget moments in life where we don't seem to fit in anywhere. And that makes her character -- one that's filled with both mishap and joy -- so relatable and real. Well, maybe except for that I-don't-know-who-the-father-of-my-baby-is bit.
Twelve years may have been a long wait, but the movie was worth waiting for. All the jokes and punches strike a chord with audiences like a reunion with a long-lost best friend. The cast members are, as they have always been, a brilliant package that makes the film so likeable after all these years. The addition of Emma Thompson as Bridget's amused gynaecologist is wonderfully cast. Thompson, an established screenwriter in her own right, also serves as the film's screenplay co-writer.
Right now, the question ringing in all fans' minds is whether we'd get to see a Bridget Jones movie No.4. Judging from what we've seen in Baby, we sure hope so. Britain has carved out numerous hits for the world through the decades. And if Harry Potter is something people can grow up with, Bridget Jones is definitely something we can grow old with.
Bridget Jones's Baby
Starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth and Patrick Dempsey
Directed by Sharon Maguire
