REVIEWED - BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON: The sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary offers up the same chick flick schtick, laments Donald Clarke. But then, what would a guy know?
THREE years ago, those of us saddled with Y chromosomes could only watch on in puzzled dismay as Bridget Jones's Diary became the most successful film ever at the Irish boxoffice. People of my gender are thus probably as well qualified to judge the merits of the sequel as they are to assess the relative efficacy of competing female sanitary products.
That said, it only requires eyes and ears to tell that The Edge of Reason is so taken up with reprises of the first picture's greatest hits - big knickers, silly jumpers, a punch-up between Messrs Grant and Firth, a TV segment in which the Jones bum plummets towards the camera - that it singularly fails to find any fresh energies of its own. The film, which relies heavily on Renée Zellweger's likeable crinkliness, is more like the second episode of a sitcom than a proper, grown-up film.
Pause for a moment to consider how such a sequel might pan out. If you guessed that Bridget and dull lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) break up after a few week's bliss and that the heroine then toys with returning to Hugh Grant's cheeky Daniel Cleaver, but, catching him in an act of more than usual caddishness, suddenly realises Mark was the one after all and has to rush across London while numberless karaoke classics shake the auditorium, then award yourself a bowl of Häagen-Dazs.
Grant is actually rather wonderful. As the host of a TV show called The Smooth Guide, in which he discusses the merits of holiday resorts purely in terms of available totty, Cleaver lures Bridget to Thailand with bedroom shenanigans in mind. (The height of his beastliness occurs with one extraordinary line in which he explicitly confirms that the sexual act described in the first film as being banned in several US states is indeed what we thought it was).
Cleaver is so much more exciting than the dreary, pompous Darcy that it is very hard to understand why Bridget . . . Well, as suggested above, humans with shaving foam in the medicine cupboard are not really in a position to judge.
Who knows, perhaps Bridget Jones will go on to entertain as many generations of women as James Bond has generations of men. Like Bond, she has begun trading in anachronisms early in her career. Is the word "shag" still funny of itself? Do we still gossip over coloured cocktails in 2004? Would a singleton under 40 wear even ersatz Laura Ashley these days? I'm really asking. I genuinely don't know.
Let us just point out that director Beeban Kidron made her name directing the landmark feminist documentary Carry Greenham Home, then shake our heads in puzzlement and leave The Edge of Reason to its millions.
