BRIDGET JONES’S BABY (Sharon Maguire). 122 minutes. Opens Friday (September 16). See listing. Rating: NNN
For a genre and franchise that’s lingered way past its best-by date, Bridget Jones’s Baby still elicits a couple of chuckles. That’s what happens when you’ve got four Oscar-winning actors in the cast. They’re not given much to do, but they know how to deliver a line.
Right after her 43rd birthday, perpetual London singleton Bridget (Renée Zellweger) drunkenly meets and beds hot American Jack (Grey’s Anatomy’s Patrick Dempsey) at a music festival, and a few weeks later hooks up with her ex, the elusive Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), at a baby christening.
When she finds herself pregnant, she must tell the men. Only problem: which one’s the dad? Cue a series of scenes of one-upmanship that act as a kind of straight woman’s wish fulfillment montage. Especially eye-rolling is a sequence where Jack, a millionaire dating app inventor, brings Bridget a bunch of gifts to make up for their lack of a dating history.
Dempsey and Firth contrast beautifully, and each has a different kind of chemistry with Zellweger. Co-writer Emma Thompson, meanwhile, gets some of the best gags as Bridget’s dryly witty obstetrician.
There’s something anachronistic about the film, however – especially a few scenes involving the film’s few non-white characters. One sequence makes Bridget, who’s supposed to be good at her TV producer job, look like an idiot.
Let’s hope Bridget raises her child to be more culturally sensitive than she is.
