Movie captivates audience
with entertaining storyline
 By
Vanessa Renderman
Special Projects Editor
Take Ally McBeal, pack on a few more pounds, ship
her off to London and you've got Bridget Jones, the main character in
the new movie "Bridget Jones's Diary."
The movie, which is based on the novel written
by Helen Fielding, follows a year in the life of the 32-year-old Jones.
Renee Zellweger plays an awkward, somewhat dysfunctional Jones, who
measures success by her weight, the number of cigarettes she smokes
and units of alcohol she drinks in a day and the status of her love
life.
Women who have read "Bridget Jones's Diary" find
themselves shouting, "This is me! She's just like me!" as they finish.
The movie evokes the same response. The audience laughs at Jones because
they can picture themselves in the same situations.
It's Jones's peculiarities that make her so real.
She lip syncs to sad songs as she drinks wine alone in her apartment;
she struggles with understanding her parents' marital problems; and
she tries to please the people in her life who continually grill her
about her love life, or lack thereof.
It's her unstable love life that makes the audience
sympathetic. You want her to succeed, but at the same time it's funny
to watch her fail. Helping her fail are the men in her life.
Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) is Jones's perverted
boss, who sends her inappropriate e-mails and eventually becomes one
of the men romantically involved in her life. He's the guy everyone
knows is bad for her.
And then there's Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a wealthy
lawyer who, at first, looks down on Jones because of her oddities and
lack of grace. He, too, becomes one of the men romantically involved
in Jones's life. The audience knows which man Jones should pick, but
she, being a typical woman who chooses the dangerous guy over the boring
guy, is unsure.
We watch Jones grow more confident, and we cheer
the "girl power" she feels in spurts.
The novel upon which the movie was based, as often
happens, is better than the movie, but Zellweger's acting as the self-conscious
Jones is convincing.
Grant's role as the jerk is a nice change for him.
We're used to seeing him as the cliché nice guy. Firth's role
as the intelligent Darcy becomes more personal when he realizes the
beauty in Jones's flaws. His uppity attitude doesn't fade during the
movie, but the audience grows to appreciate it.
Whatever happens to Jones also happens to the audience.
When her friends listen to her talk about her insecurities, the audience
is attentive — hearing Jones say the same words that they've probably
said.
Unfortunately, we don't see enough of Jones's best
friends, Shazzer, Jude and Tom. In the novel, these characters help
keep Jones stable; in the movie, it seems as though she is the one consoling
them.
The screenwriting is better than the acting, and
the movie didn't quite match the book scene for scene, but the attempt
was there.
A novel that sold more than 4 million copies worldwide,
as "Bridget Jones's Diary" did, is hard to live up to onscreen. Women
all over the world related to the novel "Bridget Jones's Diary." Now
they can relate to the movie.
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