Probably - and I've been known to make the odd mistake, and I should warn you that I haven't read the source novel - the reason I didn't much care for the film adaptation of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary was Richard Curtis, the screenwriter who started out his career working on the popular Black Adder series on the BBC in the early nineteen-eighties as well as the classic Mr. Bean series, and who made his name with the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral (for which he received Oscar and British Academy Award nominations) and the Julia Roberts vehicle Notting Hill. The other hands in the Bridget Jones script were Andrew Davies (Circle of Friends, The Tailor of Panama, TV's Pride and Prejudice and Emma) and Fielding herself, who is world-known for nothing if not her two enormously popular novels about the plucky, indomitable B. Jones. I don't know how the adapting burden was divvied up, but if there's anything Curtis has done in the past ten years, he's perfected the art of making every citizen of the United Kingdom a wellspring of dry humor, relentless pleasantness (the darkest parts of the Diary are light gray, almost silver), and limitless eccentricities. The Richard Curtis trademark seems to be the hero/heroine's gang of friends and confidantes, who function as his or her support group, the film's comic relief, and (in an offhand way) the story's Greek chorus, but echoes of the Notting Hill/Four Weddings franchise are also felt in other parts of the story, a story that doesn't seem to have a novel at its roots or, for that matter, a diary, but seems inspired by unused subplots from the aforementioned pair of British blockbusters.

Not to say that Curtis should shoulder all the blame - Bridget Jones's Diary is another plastic truffle from the Miramax feel-good-or-die factory, good to look at but not the best thing for one's digestive system. The plot is some tired hooey about a young single gal who frets over frivolous things (when an actress like Renée Zellweger is concerned about her figure, something's wrong), gets duped by several would-be suitors who turn out unsurprisingly to be slimeballs, and ends up with the man that no one expected her to end up with. The story uses the heroine of Richard LaGrevanese's overlooked Living Out Loud, runs her through a dozen painfully trite sitcom situations, and slaps on a happy ending (after, of course, the most thoroughly unconvincing excuse for pre-climactic suspense I've seen since Dancer in the Dark). This is the sort of film that makes you feel like a heel if you don't have a knee-slapping, foot-tapping wonderful time, and serves as not only an advertisement for itself, but also its merchandising tie-ins: the hits-heavy soundtrack and inevitable re-release of the novel, using the movie ads and photographs for cover art. ("Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant.") These kind of movie-as-its-own-advertisement techniques hide lesser problems such as: the fact that film lacks a center, has no sense of rhythm, and contains no genuine insights into the plight of the single girl, except for those harvested from a lifetime watching television sitcoms and television-sitcom-derived movies.

The director is Sharon Maguire, an award-winning BBC documentarist for whom Diary is her feature film debut. She lacks a distinctive touch as a filmmaker but ably assembles the movie, and keeps things moving briskly. As the titular diarist, Zellweger is convincingly British and appropriately button-cute. (A great Renée Zellweger performance, however, is still to come. She always seems half-there, and half-empty; she has potential to be a fine comedienne, though.) In the roles of competing suitors, Hugh Grant is wickedly charming and slimy, while Colin Firth (the villainous Lord Wessex in Shakespeare in Love) spends most of his screen time pouting. There are factors which converge to make Bridget Jones's Diary tolerable and fleetingly enjoyable, but not many - one leaves the film empty, and wearing an ebbing smile.

Recommended:
No