Editor’s Note: Holly Thomas is a writer and editor based in London. She is morning editor at Katie Couric Media. She tweets @HolstaT. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. See more reviews on CNN.
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Few members of the metropolitan liberal elite would admit that the 2001 film “Bridget Jones’s Diary” was their favorite film, but if they picked up a battered copy of the 1996 novel, they would have a hard time putting it down. Bridget Jones may be neurotic, absurd, and mired in the patriarchy, but she’s far more fun than any black-coffee-guzzling, Marx-disturbing Sally Rooney heroine.
That being said, there comes a time when we need to put even our most beloved mini-staycation enthusiasts out to pasture. That moment has come for Bridget – or more precisely, for her big screen avatar. The third film, 2016’s “Bridget Jones’s Baby” (which followed the 2004 sequel, “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”) was enjoyable enough, but it left me feeling like I had filled my plate one too many times at once. delicious but plentiful buffet. I was full. It was time to put down my fork.
Yet it is a truth universally acknowledged that a trilogy that brings in more than $760 million at the worldwide box office is doomed to become a tetralogy. (It is also a truth universally acknowledged that writing mentioning Bridget Jones or any adaptation of Jane Austen must contain the phrase “this is a truth universally acknowledged”, so this is irrelevant). Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant are set to reprise their roles as Bridget and her former boss Daniel Cleaver alongside “One Day” star Leo Woodall for the series’ fourth outing, “Mad About the Boy.”
As much as I love Bridget and her comrades, I’m not convinced this is a good idea.
Due to the time gap between the book and its adaptation (“Mad About the Boy” was published in 2013), many of the jokes the novel latched onto (Bridget struggles with social media! Bridget endures dating online!) were made in the third film, leaving little room for maneuver. Mark Darcy is dead, which means misery for Colin Firth fans, but Daniel Cleaver is back, which delights fans of Hugh Grant’s second act.
I appreciate the utility of canning Darcy and reintroducing Cleaver (comedy demands chaos), but I worry about the comedic potential of a post-menopausal Bridget. It’s not that women that age can’t be funny, they obviously can. It’s just that one of the most heartwarming things about the third film was that Bridget, now 43, having been terribly messed up during her thirties, lived her life together. She was still Bridget, but she was confident and competent. There’s a reverse potential for laughter once the characters evolve, and I’d rather leave her alone than inject malignant forces into her life to shake things up. I suspect that with all this Twitter and Tinder-generated comedy already spent, it might seem a little forced.
For joyful reading and viewing, I don’t think the original 32-year-old singleton can be improved upon. It was only after she arrived that we realized how starved we were for ridiculous ladies. Literature is full of crazy male comedy heroes – Bertie Wooster, Adrian Mole, Harry Paget Flashman, William Boot – but before Bridget, equally absurd women were rarely the main attraction. These were the heroine’s wacky accessories. Mrs. Bennet may have been the funniest character on Pride and Prejudice, but she wasn’t its star.
Bridget Jones changed that. It’s often lamented that books and films have bypassed feminism – even the author, Helen Fielding, admitted to being shocked by the first installment in retrospect – but they’ve also sort of moved past it. The goal of feminism is not to impose impossible standards on women, but to allow everyone to enjoy equal freedom to be themselves. The goal of writing is not to create characters who are perfectly well-rounded human beings, but people you want to spend time with. Yes, Bridget’s obsession with recording her weight and food intake wasn’t a road map to good mental health, but it reflected the most relevant neuroses of the 1990s. And she was so funny.
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The most disappointing thing about Bridget Jones has always been the reaction to her, particularly Renée Zellweger’s portrayal. The main joke that didn’t make it to the big screen was Bridget’s lamenting about her obviously modest weight. My favorite example is VE Day: “9th 1, alcohol units 6, cigarettes 25, calories 3,800 (but celebrating the anniversary of the end of rationing). » When the films were released, filmmakers and audiences took Bridget’s blatantly skewed portrayal at face value. One male reviewer devoted several lines to Renée Zellweger’s “massively dimpled” thighs and “generous buttocks,” “as majestic as a sinking galleon.” There’s nothing wrong with having a majestic background, but Zellweger’s can hardly be described as “awesome” in a dimensional sense.
I will almost certainly see “Mad About the Boy.” I’ll watch pretty much anything in theaters as long as it’s not boring, and I’m as sympathetic to Hugh Grant’s return to dastardly greatness as the next millennium whose first introduction to swearing came courtesy of “Four Weddings and a burial”. But after spending much of this afternoon happily re-reading “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and coming across clips from the 2001 film (vital research, you understand), I’m not holding my breath for a classic.
