‘Bridget Jones’s Baby’ is a pleasing comedy, perfect for ‘date night’
She’s back…thinner…older…and just as quirky as ever. Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) returns in this third film to continue with blunders and stumbles and she’s hit her mid 40’s and accepted her life as a fun-loving spinster. But to her surprise, that free-spirited fun leads to an unexpected pregnancy. To add to the complications, she’s not sure who the father is.
Is it her long-time, on-again-off-again love Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) or her uninhibited one-night stand Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey)? Then there’s the other question. Who is she hoping will turn out to be the father?
I wasn’t really a fan of the first film and didn’t even see the second film, but I actually enjoyed this latest chapter which opens in theaters on September 16, 2016. Maybe it’s just because, like Bridget, I’m several years older now and my tastes have refined, but I don’t recall laughter in the theater the first time….at least not like I heard with this one.
While the film has an R rating due to language, sexual references, and some nudity, it’s not an “extremely R” film that makes you uncomfortable to watch with multiple age groups. The items dictating the R rating are done in such a light-hearted context that it would be hard to imagine it offending any audience member who has chosen to watch a movie about a woman trying to figure out who is her baby-daddy.
I was especially pleased to see that the film still focused on Bridget and her interpretation of her life and relationships rather than building all the comedy around pregnancy details. I recall no mention of swelling ankles, back pain, loss of sleep, or bizarre cravings. The only reference to morning sickness had a very “Bridgetesque” quality to it which added to the humor without going overboard like some over-done pregnancy comedies of the past.
An unexpected surprise was the inclusion of a social message regarding the ever-changing definition of family in the modern world. Bridget’s pregnancy doesn’t exist in a bubble but in the middle of her mother’s campaign for public office.
Certainly, there’s nothing a politician wants to publicize during their campaign than an un-wed daughter’s surprise pregnancy that possibly resulted from a one-night stand, right? Without going off the rails, writters Emma Thompson, Dan Mazer, and Helen Fielding managed to address that social reality in a way that was unobtrusive to the main story and still put a comedic spin on the outcome.
In the end, it turns out that the baby’s father is – gotcha! If I had to wait til the end of the film, so do you. Bridget Jones’s Baby is a great date night movie for audiences. I left the theater thinking “What a cute movie.” Nothing heavy or overly-dramatic, just cute and funny. We can all use a little cute and funny every now and again.
Overall Bridget Jones’s Baby gets 3 1/2 stars out of 5 stars
Review by Debbie Sage