Thirty-Something Singleton Lost

It's a pity that they should do so little justice to the character of the lovable thirty-something single female in the sequel to the original film on Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason that now is in the movie theatres. In the first part we learned to like that endearing Bridget whose shortcomings were basically to be thirty and single, and well …, a little chubby, hopelessly romantic, a bit gauche, and to smoke too much. Who could not identify at least with some of her quirks and some of her mishaps? I sure could. And even when we affectionately laughed at her, the joke wasn’t on her, but on our judgemental, competitive society that most of the time doesn’t value the treasures to be found in Bridget’s ingenuity and candor. At the end of the story also Bridget came out as the winner, having beaten the odds, overcome misfortunes and found her too-good-to-be-true Mr. Right. And again we identified with her.

Unfortunately, in the sequel to Bridget’s “adventures” she has become completely inane, brainless and vulgar. Oh, maybe that’s all there is to thirty-something single females. Because truly there must be a reason why she didn’t settle down yet! And we wind up feeling so sorry for her perfect boyfriend that we almost feel like calling up the human rights watch to get him out of this relationship from hell. Now, so much for the character of Bridget Jones. Otherwise, the movie has a few funny bits, but the story is completely worthless. There’s a formulaic rerun of the gigs from the first movie, most of which try to outdo the previous versions. It wears a bit on your patience. I got my best laughs from the first fifteen minutes of the movie, then I started thinking: Oh, no, not again …

But I still believe there must be a lovable Bridget out there somewhere. Maybe Darcy will find her third time around …