CATRIONA PAUL at the Movies.

RENEE ZELLWEGER has once again piled on the pounds, which can only mean one thing – Bridget Jones is back. Plumper, more awkward, more ungracious, yet supposedly more like the average female British singleton than ever, Bridget is just as likely to infuriate as charm second time round.
  
Annoyance may lie with the contrived plot which makes it necessary for Bridget to sabotage her wonderful relationship with Darcy (Colin Firth) in order for the “will they/won’t they” tension of the original to reoccur.

The only consolation for watching Bridget spoil what seems an increasingly unlikely relationship with the handsome, aloof Darcy, is the reappearance of the fiendish cad Daniel (Hugh Grant). Daniel has been stripped of any pretensions of being nice (writer Andrew Davies is risking Daniel’s charm in the process), but Grant makes even the rudest lines somehow excusable.
  
Given the right girly company, this film is bearable, and quite funny in part. The acting is superb with Zellweger, Firth and Grant making an equally watchable trio. But the contrived plot relies for laughs on reducing the formerly sympathetic Jones into an accident-prone lump who men fancy against their better judgement and in defiance of her naff clothes and stompy gait.
  
More caricature than heroine, Jones has had her day.
  
BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON
General release

Director: Beeban Kidron
Writers: Helen Fielding (novel); Andrew Davies (screenplay)
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gemma Jones, Jim Broadbent, Celia Imrie, James Faulkner, Neil Pearson
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 108 mins
Country: UK
 

© Catriona Paul, 2004