I’m not a "real girl." I’ve never ordered a Diet Coke, don’t obsess over fashion magazine quizzes, don’t coffee klatch about men who are emotionally unavailable and don’t call the day after, don’t drown my sorrows in chocolate and then suffer paroxysms of guilt over the resulting weight gain. And perhaps most tellingly, I don’t think that the novel Bridget Jones’s Diary is a hilarious and all-too-true depiction of my existence, though it does have some funny lines. But apparently a lot of the real girls out there do, as the book was a runaway best seller and the audience at the sneak preview of the film adaptation I attended of this great piece of literature was probably 75% real girl under 30, all filled with breathless giggly anticipation.

The plot of the novel and the movie, such as it is, follows 30ish Brit Bridget Jones (played in the film by American Renee Zellweger) through a year of her life, which mainly involves obsessing over men and her appearance. The book is written in diary form, and the film retains some of this conceit, featuring voiceover by Zellweger and interior monologue splashed across billboards and written directly on the screen. Bridget first obsesses over Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), a love 'em and leave 'em type who also happens to be her boss. A flirtatious email exchange over the length of her skirts leads to a pseudo-relationship, which inevitably leads to heartbreak. Bridget also has a mother who, like all comedic television and film mothers, is constantly interfering in her daughter’s life and trying to set her up with a man, in this case named Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), whom Bridget detests (wonder how long that will last?), and a Greek chorus of single friends who seem to exist solely for the purpose of forming her cheering section. As the year wears on, Bridget laughs a little, cries a little, and yes, grows a little, in her quest to find the deep spiritual contentment one can only achieve by becoming half of the perfect couple.

The book was pretty thin to start with, but the movie has pared it down only to the essential elements, and then thrown in some unnecessary cinematic cliches to paint the story in even broader strokes than it was originally conceived. There are lots of scenes of Bridget overeating, drinking to excess, smoking like a chimney, falling down, and just generally making a fool of herself in public, all of which are supposed to be uproarious, but which are only on occasion. There is also a rather silly and unnecessary use of slow motion to indicate dramatic scenes in the plot – apparently we the audience wouldn’t be able to discern that things like Bridget discovering that her boyfriend is cheating on her were a big deal without this oh-so-subtle visual cue.

Renee Zellweger makes a pretty good Bridget, though more toned down than what I would have pictured from reading the novel. Her expressive face and overall good humor do make you want to be on her side, even while you’re wishing that Bridget would just figure out the romantic denouement that’s been telegraphed since the first ten minutes of the movie so that the movie can finally end. Zellweger’s British accent is also quite good, though a bit on the posh side. But it did lead me to wonder, why can’t British actresses be found to play British leading roles? First Gwyneth Paltrow was snapping up every decent role in sight, and now Renee Zellweger. Though if the actresses (Shirley Henderson and Sally Phillips) brought in to make up two-thirds of Bridget’s woefully underutilized support group in the movie are any indication, it may be just as well, for their performances are dull and unmemorable (though this is probably mainly because they’ve been given absolutely nothing to do in the script but spout cliches).

Although the Pride and Prejudice parallels from the book have been completely thrown out the window, Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy is still almost too Mr. Darcy to bear (the character was based on Firth’s performance as Mr. Darcy in a BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice). He’s stiff and wooden, never seems to smile, and even when he’s avowing love for Bridget his expression would lead you to think that he’d like to strangle her. And the fight scene between him and Hugh Grant, seemingly constructed solely because it’s a movie conceit for the male points of a love triangle to come to blows over their woman, is almost laughable in its awkwardness and stupidity. Thankfully, most of the novel’s asinine subplot about Bridget’s mother’s mid-life crisis has been expunged from the film adaptation, but it leaves Darcy without an impetus to come to Bridget’s rescue, and makes the climatic scenes between them significantly less heart-fluttering than on the page (of either Bridget Jones’s Diary or Pride and Prejudice).

Ah, but Hugh Grant, he’s one of my few concessions to real girlhood. Because despite being a somewhat enlightened woman (though I have to wonder about that some days), my greatest ambition in life is to have a British boyfriend. And while I spend a shocking amount of time debating with myself over whether Ewan McGregor, Oasis’ Liam Gallagher, or George Harrison circa 1964 is most suitable, in reality I’ve always considered Hugh Grant, with his floppy hair, doe eyes, and stuttering self-deprecation, the ideal. I know it’s inane, but I can’t seem to help enjoying him in films even if they’re utter crap (like Notting Hill or 9 Months or Four Weddings and a Funeral - geez, just about every movie he makes is utter crap, isn’t it?). And, while I may be prejudiced, Hugh Grant is the best thing about Bridget Jones’s Diary, perfectly roguish and sexy, with that open shirt collar thing he always seems to have going on. He’s so perfect, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine how Bridget can even conceive of giving him up, bastard though he may be.

But Hugh Grant or not, the real girls who go to see the movie of Bridget Jones’s Diary are likely to come away more than a little disappointed. Bridget Jones’s real girlness has been diluted in the movie – she’s much more decisive, much less self-destructive, and much less obsessed with calories and phone calls than in the book, which is not necessarily a bad thing, since in her original incarnation Bridget is a two-dimensional Cosmo girl. But she doesn’t really gain a third dimension in the film, despite being given more of a backbone, and half of a brain rather than a third of one. She just becomes another cliche, Ally McBeal or Carrie Bradshaw without the dramatic scenes that come two-thirds of the way through each episode, rather than a fully realized character. And because the movie is painted in such broad strokes, it makes Bridget come off as rather dull in comparison.

This isn’t to say that real girls won’t still get a kick out of this movie. But it’s unlikely to be the "you go girl" fest they were expecting. Ah well, all part of the price of being a real girl. They’ll just have to go back to debating the merits of various shades of lip-gloss and all will be right in their worlds again.


Recommended:
No