"Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" picks up where the 2001 movie, "Bridget Jones' Diary," left off. Based on Helen Fielding's novel about a plump but cute British woman in her 30s, her failed relationships and her quest to find herself and true love, four weeks and "71 shags later," Bridget, played by Ren?e Zellweger, has a new diary for a new year.
This year finds Bridget in a relationship with Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), but Bridget can't seem to escape the ever present danger of the somewhat crude but very attractive Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Throughout the movie, Bridget finds herself trying to avoid embarrassing situations, while figuring out how to get Mark Darcy to propose to her.
While the sequel is as equally cheesy, cute and funny as the first, it lacks the plot that made the original so appealing. While the first movie kept audiences guessing as to what would to happen to Bridget next, the sequel is predictable in that Bridget keeps getting into embarrassing situation after embarrassing situation. She barely catches a break throughout the entire movie, and although the situations are funny, they are a bit excessive.
While it is easy to follow the sequel without having seen the original, in order to pick up on some of the situations that make the sequel funny, audiences have to have a general knowledge about the first movie. For example, the relationship between Bridget and Daniel Cleaver is not clearly outlined in the sequel, which makes it hard for someone who has not seen the first movie to understand the complexity of their peculiar situation, especially early in the film. Part of this confusion may be due to the fact that Cleaver was not written into the second book.
Bridget's situation with Mark Darcy is also played out for too long in the sequel. While the film is centered on Bridget trying to get Mark to marry her, they break up and get back together far too many times. The best scenes in the movie are the ones that don't involve the couple at all, but rather Bridget getting caught in ever-predictable, strange and embarrassing situations. These classic Bridget situations will have you laughing out loud, but are also slightly less realistic than those found in the previous film.
While "Edge of Reason" is cute and funny, and will leave audiences with a highly anticipated happy ending, the producers seemed to be trying too hard to outdo the original. The acting is as good, and the characters are just as lovable as in the first movie, but the sequel lacks the originality of the first. Overall, it is a film worth seeing. You'll get a lot of laughs out of it, but don't enter the theater expecting it to top the original.
