Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Directed by Beeban Kidron
By Cam Lindsay

What happened to Bridget Jones? The beautiful, bumbling klutz with one foot in her mouth stole the hearts of viewers in Bridget Jones’s Diary and made it okay for guys to watch a film starring atypical ladies man Hugh Grant (in his best role to date: a slimy, sex-obsessed pervert).

Well, you know what they say about sequels (excluding The Godfather II, of course). Expectations shouldn’t be too high for The Edge of Reason, because as any Bridget devotee will tell you, the story is just not as good as Diary’s. But did it have to be this bad?

The film picks up weeks after the first ended. Bridget is settling into her new job as a television journalist while simultaneously being madly in love with boyfriend Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a successful but emotionally impassive lawyer. However, Bridget never makes anything easy and immediately begins to falter with relationship insecurities about Mark’s new lady co-worker and, as always, herself.

Quickly the film begins relying on Bridget’s idiosyncrasies a little too much in order to balance out the weak story. She makes a fool of herself during a quiz at Mark’s important dinner, climbs onto and falls off his roof spying on him and winds up in a Malaysian jail on a drug charge, only to have a blast teaching inmates how to sing "Like A Virgin," instead of suffering from the poor conditions.

A true sign of the film’s desperation is the addition of Bridget’s former lover Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) to the story. His inclusion is purely for cheap sexual temptation and if he were cut right out of the film, very little would change.

In the end, The Edge of Reason takes the lovable character that was Bridget Jones and reduces her to an utter mess; she’s a little bit chubbier, a little bit clumsier and a lot less funny. (Universal)
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