Britflix: Bridget Jones’s Diary

Bridget Jones is a rom-com icon and a piece of British pop culture. She has appeared in a series of novels and seeing that a fourth film is out, now is a good time to check out the film that started it all.

Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is a 32-year-old singleton living in London. After a romantic setup goes wrong, Bridget chronicles her life in a diary and resolves to improve herself and find a suitable man. Over a year she finds two suitable suitors, changes career, and suffers from some family upheaval.

Bridget Jones’s Diary was made during a golden era of British rom-coms. It came after the successes of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill and before Love Actually and Wimbledon. Working Title Films made all these films and many featured the involvement of Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis. Rom-coms were Working Title’s bread-and-butter for a long time. Bridget Jones’s Diary was a huge success, making $334.2 million from a $25 million budget, and earned Zellweger her first Oscar nomination.

Bridget Jones’s Diary was filled with talent. Starring alongside Zellweger were Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, and the supporting cast was filled with recognisable faces such as Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Sally Phillips, Shirley Henderson, and Celia Imrie. It’s hard to go wrong with a cast like that.

There was some controversy when Zellweger was first cast as Bridget Jones because she’s an American playing an English character. Any concerns were disproven since Bridget Jones became one of Zellweger’s most recognisable roles, and she performed with an excellent English accent. The appeal of Bridget was being an everywoman. She wasn’t a supermodel 20-something hotshot. She was in her early 30s, smoked and drank too much, had a big bum, and was not fulfilling her potential.

Firth and Grant were great love interests. Firth as Mark Darcy was an aloof, upper-middle-class barrister who initially disliked Bridget and the feeling was mutual. Grant as Daniel Cleaver was Bridget’s boss who started off as a typical character for the actor, a charming, well-to-do man, but he was soon revealed to be a self-centred jerk. Daniel acted as an early example of a villainous role that Grant mastered in films like Paddington 2, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and Heretic.

Helen Fielding adapted her own novel with Richard Curtis and Andrew Davies, a British comedy legend, and a man who has a knack for adapting classic literature to the small screen. Fielding was influenced by Pride and Prejudice when she wrote the novel and the film adaptation took that to heart since Davies wrote and Firth starred in the 1995 TV adaptation. Firth’s character was literally called Mr. Darcy in this film. The dynamic between the main characters was like the main trio in the novel, a heroine, the handsome rake, and the uptight stiff man who ends up being the real love interest.

The diary structure of the film makes it feel like an adaptation of a Victorian novel. Many classic novels were serialised in newspapers which led characters to different avenues. Bridget Jones’s Diary story does play like a series of events, from Bridget and Daniel going on a romantic weekend, to getting a new job in television. Despite all her adventures, Bridget kept running into Mr. Darcy.

Bridget Jones’s Diary was a genuinely funny film. Bridget found herself in embarrassing situations throughout the film, leading to many great comedy moments.  These include Bridget drunkenly singing “Without You,” dressing up like a bunny girl for a party but finding out too late that the theme has changed, and Bridget’s chaotic news report at a fire station. There were also plenty of visual gags like Bridget not realising she was wearing a see-through top and witty lines. Bridget Jones’s Diary had one of the greatest comedy fights in cinematic history because the two opponents were hopelessly pathetic. It played fairly realistically because they were flailing around.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is a quintessential British chick flick. Even after a quarter of a century, the film still holds up.