Bridget Jones’s Baby, 2016.
Directed by Sharon Maguire.
Starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones and Emma Thompson.
SYNOPSIS:
Bridget’s focus on single life and her career is interrupted when she finds herself pregnant, but with one hitch … she can only be fifty percent sure of the identity of her baby’s father.
There is something utterly idyllic watching your favourite film characters grow old on-screen. When we first got introduced to Renee Zellweger aka Bridget Jones, she was a jolly and naive thirty-something, wearing a vest that resembled her mother’s living room carpet and was fighting off annoying relatives, who kept incessantly poking into the cracks of her non-existent private life.
Two films later, and she is firmly cemented as an iconoclast for a binge-drinking, chain-smoking desperate singleton, who sings along to the ‘Top Ten Break-Up Anthems’ compilation album a bit too often than is normally needed. What Miss Jones has famously taught us, first and foremost, is that age should never be an issue for a woman. No matter how old you are, it is still absolutely acceptable to run down the street in your underwear and talk about your sexual experiences to absolute strangers.
When Universal and Working Title announced that they are making a third and final Bridget Jones movie, there was only one question that commanded the intense anticipation – is this film going to be a proper punctuation mark to the much-beloved adventures of Miss Jones that will do her eccentricities enough justice? Is there going to be an appropriate ending to the franchise that has churned out one of the most memorable humorous moments in film?
And the answer is – most certainly yes. Having Sharon Maguire back at the helm after skipping the second film, she gathered together a brilliant team of writers like Helen Fielding herself together with Emma Thompson and Dan Mazer, who certainly know how to fearlessly look at the ridicules of the contemporary tech and app-crazed world right in the eye.
Bridget Jones’s Baby gloriously brings back the dearly missed nostalgia, tying it around the web of modern sensibilities. Bridget Jones is older, not that much wiser but absolutely more fearless and not ready to succumb to the social demands of her age – filling in a great gap in the outdated and formulaic representation of older women in film.
Can’t say that Bridget is exactly where we left her in the last film, the not-so-popular The Edge of Reason. Which is quite a surprise, considering that the prospect of a happy marriage with the stone-faced romantic Mark Darcy was looming over her like a rainy cloud over the London sky.
But fast forward twelve years and here she is again, back in her tiny Borough flat, wearing her famous flannel pyjamas and celebrating her 43rd birthday alone. But this time it’s not Mariah Carey who will be accompanying Jones in her journey of self-deprecation – she switches the tune to House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ and decides to forget her woeful state of being and party like it’s 1999.
Bridget joins her perky and sharp-mouthed 30 year-old work colleague Miranda (brilliant Sarah Solemani) in her attempt at ‘glamping’ at what is implied to be Glastonbury festival’s VIP section. She experiences almost everything that could be on a checklist of festival ‘don’t’s’ – falls right into the festival’s emblematic puddle of mud, gets horrendously wasted, ignores a celebrity (Ed Sheeran), crowd-surfs, and, of course, it wouldn’t be Bridget Jones if she didn’t spend a night with a beautiful stranger – an online dating guru-millionaire Jack (played by the never-ageing, Patrick McDreamy Dempsey)
Around the same time, during Jude’s baby christening, she encounters the freshly-divorced Mark Darcy, and, a couple of glasses of wine later, they are together in same hotel room, re-living the old days of passionate romance. But this time there a few consequences to her pair of one night stands – Bridget gets knocked up and, of course, the father could equally be one of the two.
And here is where the real comedy begins. At this point, is not the case anymore of which type of guy would suit Bridget better as her life companion as she won’t be able to pick and choose. Now Jones’s destiny will be decided by no one else but a sardonic obstetrician Dr. Rawlings (a role that superb Emma Thompson wrote for herself), who will eventually have to deliver the news about the identity of baby’s father. And it seems that both of the men are up for a challenge, seemingly ready to take on the role of parent – which, of course, does not make it easy for Bridget.
Finally we see a completely different Bridget Jones – ready settle down and take up on the duties of a domestic goddess and loving mother. Who knew that this day would eventually come? Especially when even her fabulous and over-zealous crew of fellow alcoholics – Shazzer, Jude and Tom – have managed to settle down and enter the life of babies and mortgages. It would have been nice to see more of the trio as they have always stood out as one of the boldest and the most hilarious characters in the franchise, but who, unfortunately, were never given enough spotlight.
It is particularly good to also welcome back Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones, who brilliantly reclaim their roles as Bridget’s mom and dad. Hats off to the ever-smiling Gemma Jones, who, after all this years, still has not lost her fervour and continues to wave the flag for those effortlessly cool moms, who, even in their seventies, still have inexhaustible amounts of energy to give to the world.
Even if you don’t remember where were you when the first ever Bridget Jones’s Diary came out – maybe being blind drunk at your friends party or tucked in your duvet on your sofa, devouring the carbs – what really matters is that the emergence of Renee Zellweger’s character signalled a shift in how woman’s age is perceived in popular media.
Bridget Jones opened a whole lot of new possibilities for women who were too intimidated by the strict society regulations of who and where a woman should be when she reached that golden age of thirty and above. And Bridget Jones’s Baby is like fireworks in the end of a celebration, saluting the end of what was a one of a roller coaster journey. Get rid of any uncertainties you have immediately, because it is as amusing and heart-warming as it has ever been. As Bridget Jones herself famously says, ‘There is still life in the old dog’.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Julia Malahovska
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