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Based on Helen Fielding's best selling novel, Bridget Jones's Diary is about taking
stock of one's life and learning to love it. Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) is 32 years old and works in a publishing firm. She is unmarried and still waiting for Mr. Right,
while substituting food, drink, and cigarettes for love. Tired of being the butt of jokes and pet project of well-meaning matchmakers, Bridget starts a diary, mapping out a
blueprint of what she really wants to do with her life, and to record its day-to-day progress. She meets again a long-time-no-see childhood playmate, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth),
a divorced renowned attorney who finds her an overweight airhead and whom she sees as just another good-looking nerd. At work, Bridget keeps fantasizing about her charming
boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and succeeds in having a short-lived affair with him. Because of her belief that as long as you are yourself and are having a grand time, her
love life becomes a litany of embarrassing failures. At her birthday party, things come to a head that she drives all her guests away, resorting once again to food and drink.
Will Bridget ever find true love?
The storyline may be skimpy, but the casting of the lead stars is perfect, especially that of
Bridget. It is one of those rare movies where the heroine is not a thin-reed model but a chubby which gives her a childlike appeal even as she clowns around in her micromini
and see-thru attires. Hugh Grant takes on quite a different role—not the shy guy of Nothing Hill but rather a charming rogue, while Firth looks every bit of a deadpan
nerd. Both the photography and music enhance Bridget's misadventures. Despite its British humor the movie elicits spontaneous laughter from the theater audience.
Though obviously done on quite a humorous vein, this movie has just too many minuses, among
which are the vulgar language punctuated by frequent swear words, pre-marital sex, a broken marriage, homosexuality and resorting to alcohol and cigarettes as an escape.
For these reasons this film is for mature viewers 18 and above.
While Bridget's crazy antics are funny, they are far from being commendable. They could even
be subtitled as "How Not to Get Your Man." Not through mindless cutesy chatter and tactics, and neither through sex or sexy outfits on a not-too-sexy figure. However, after
one of her failed ventures, she wisely chooses to mend her ways rather than to give up. There is sincere love between Bridget and her family and friends, and at her party,
they toast her as the Bridget who cannot cook but whom they love just as she is. Her principle of being yourself is well said but it must be a self that you yourself must
first love and respect. After all is said and done, yes, true love is still attainable in this world of ours; it is sustaining this love that is something else.
(Date reviewed: August 10, 2001)
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