Bridget’s crusade proceeds unhappily while her mom (who “comes from the time whilst pickles on toothpicks have been nonetheless the peak of sophistication”) introduces her to good-looking Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who's at a vacation celebration opposed to his will and in a nasty temper and is overheard (by Bridget) describing her as a “verbally incontinent spinster. ” issues pass larger at paintings, the place she exchanges saucy e-mails along with her boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). His opener: “You seem to have forgotten your skirt. ” they start an affair, whereas Darcy circles the outskirts of her cognizance, nonetheless having a look luscious yet performing emotionally constipated. Zellweger’s Bridget is a reminder of the 1st time we actually grew to become conscious of her in a film, in Jerry Maguire (1996), the place she was once so lovable and weak we would have liked to tickle and console her while. Her paintings in Nurse Betty (2000) used to be largely yet now not sufficiently praised, and now the following she is, absolutely herself and entirely Bridget Jones, either straight away. a narrative like this can’t paintings until we think unconditional affection for the heroine, and casting Zellweger achieves that; the one trade i will contemplate is Kate Winslet, who comes shut yet lacks the self-destructive dog facets. The motion picture has in a different way been solid with in charge (perhaps infallible) British comedian actors. the 1st time Hugh provide seemed on-screen, I chuckled for no solid cause in any respect, simply as I regularly do while I see Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, or Jack Nicholson—because i do know that regardless of the position, they'll infuse it with greater than the health care provider ordered. supply can play a male Bridget Jones (as he did in Notting Hill), yet he’s larger as a cad, and the following he surpasses himself through mendacity to Bridget approximately Darcy after which dishonest on her with a lady from the hot York workplace. (An “American stick insect,” is what Bridget tells her diary. ) Colin Firth, however, needs to unbend to turn into adorable, and after we do eventually love him, it’s principally simply because we all know what an attempt it took on his half. Bridget Jones’s Diary is famously, if vaguely, patterned after Jane Austen’s satisfaction and Prejudice; Firth performed Mr. Darcy within the BBC’s 1995 edition of the radical, and now performs one other Darcy right here. I didn’t see the television model yet study from the critic James Berardinelli that Firth “plays this half precisely as he performed the sooner function, making it glaring that the 2 Darcys are basically an identical. ” it's a common rule of romantic fiction that every one nice love tales has to be reflected by way of their low-comedy counterpoints. simply as Hal woos Katharine, Falstaff trifles with Doll Tearsheet. If Bridget needs to choose from Mark and Daniel, then her mom (Gemma Jones) needs to make a choice from her kindly yet easy-chair-loving husband (Jim Broadbent) and a speeding huckster for a television buying channel. The motion picture strings jointly one humorous set piece after one other, as while Bridget is going in gown to a celebration the place she proposal the subject used to be “Tarts and Vicars. ” Or whilst she stumbles right into a activity on a television information exhibit and makes her recognized untimely front down the hearth pole.