‘Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason’

The sequel’s ditzy heroine loses her man, mopes, recovers, learns from her mistakes and wins back her boyfriend, with wacky adventures along the way.

By: Elise Nakhnikian
   If you and a friend or two have a couple of hours to kill and want a few laughs, you might want to see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. But only if nothing better is on TV.
   Bridget Jones’s Diary was a likeable movie about a woman who was adorable in spite of — or maybe because of — her rampant insecurities. The sequel picks up where the other left off, as the no longer single Bridget asks her diary: "What happens after you walk off into the sunset?"
   That premise has possibilities, but instead of following Bridget (Renee Zellweger) as she settles into life as part of a couple, The Edge of Reason puts her through her single-girl paces again. She loses her man, mopes a bit, recovers her spirits, learns from her mistakes, and wins back her boyfriend, pausing for wacky adventures along the way.
   In order for a movie like this to succeed, the audience has to fall for the heroine almost as hard as the hero does. Zellweger earns our affection, if not our love. Scaling our defenses with a flat-footed waddle, pursed lips and upturned chin that make Bridget look like Donald Duck’s long-lost niece, her Bridget draws you in through the sheer force of her essential decency and klutzy, perpetually perky charm. Like a de-glamorized Marilyn Monroe, she oozes a naive vulnerability that men seem to find irresistible, and women respond to her kindness and her way of blurting out whatever she’s thinking. She even charms a cell full of inmates when she winds up in a Thai prison (don’t ask).
   But not even Zellweger can save Bridget from getting a bit tiresome to watch as she sabotages her own happiness. Lurching through life like an overgrown teenager, her emotions all revved up and her self-image stuck in first gear, she’s forever making and breaking promises to improve herself, whether by quitting smoking or by not messing up her idealized relationship with "wonderful, loyal Mark Darcy, who loves me just the way I am." And she’s constantly obsessing about being fat, although the 20 or so pounds Zellweger gained for the film only rounded out the actress’s gym-sculpted muscles and made her more voluptuous.
   In the first film, the contrast between Bridget’s essential good sense and the foolish way she acts provides most of the fun. In the sequel, she seems like a genuine ditz, more often wrong than not.
   Even her beloved Darcy, invented by Bridget Jones novelist and co-screenwriter Helen Fielding as a playful nod to Colin Firth’s turn as the smolderingly romantic Darcy in the BBC’s version of Pride and Prejudice, is a bit of a bore now. Bridget developed a tremendous crush on Firth while watching the TV show, so it was a nice inside joke when Firth showed up as Mark Darcy in the first installment. But it was also far more than stunt casting, since Firth projected the right mix of bemused adoration, old-school chivalry and fear of rejection to make his Darcy seem worthy of our Bridget — and quirky enough to be her soulmate. The actor is back for The Edge of Reason, but he’s not given much to admire this time, so he looks more pained than pleased.
   By the time Bridget’s effortlessly smarmy old boyfriend, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant, who slips on the role like an old shoe), shows up to tease her out of her funk, you’re practically rooting for him to steal her away from the dour Darcy. But that would never do, of course, so Grant only manages to steal the movie.
   Before gliding offscreen, Grant gooses Firth to life for his best scene, a fight between the chivalrous Darcy and the caddish Cleaver for Bridget’s honor. The two flail away in awkward intensity, as earnestly ineffectual as a couple of warring 5-year-olds. It’s the most ridiculous-looking movie fight I’ve seen in a long time — and probably the most realistic.
   The story of The Edge of Reason mimics the arc of the first movie but doesn’t reach nearly as high, so its real appeal is its shtick. Most of that is just mildly funny, but a couple of bits, like the fight between Darcy and Cleaver, are laugh-out-loud good. The pickings in movie theaters are pretty slim this year, so that may be enough to make this sequel worth seeing.
Rated R. Contains language and some sexual situations.