The news that a fourth film of this series was just released was enough to have my wife rewatch the first film. I’d never watched it myself but I suppose I’d better because its cultural impact is very real. Immediately it is obvious that this is a very in-your-face adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, with a female heroine who is just ever so slightly overweight, maladroit and tongue-tied so as to be relatable to the average woman. It is not a terribly sophisticated film but it is decently funny and I can see why it’s the almost perfect female fantasy film.

At the age of 32, the perpetually single Bridget Jones starts writing a diary to document her efforts to lose weight and become more attractive. Her mother insists on matchmaking her with a childhood friend and barrister Mark Darcy at a New Year’s party but both make a poor impression on the other. She instead has a crush on someone she knows is bad, her womanizing boss Daniel Cleaver at the publishing company where she works. After flirting in the office, Bridget hooks up with him at a book launch event. There they also run into Mark and his attractive lawyer colleague Natasha. Daniel explains that he and Mark were friends at university but fell out with each other after he caught Mark having sex with his fiancée. She is delighted when Daniel accompanies her on a weekend mini-break. But just before they are meant to join her family at a party, he begs out, citing the need to urgently return to work in London. She is forced to endure the ridicule of her relatives by herself while wearing a ridiculous bunny costume.

This is the kind of film that clearly signposts every plot point and character arc well in advance. Since it even names its male lead character Darcy, I suppose it actually takes being predictable as a virtue. It wants to be as easy to understand and digest as possible. That’s fair enough but the one point when that really irked me was when Daniel recounts the story of Mark seducing his fiancée and Bridget just goes, “Huh, that makes sense.” I know that a major part of the appeal of this film is having Bridget being a relatable everywoman, with the same types of problems with weight, self-control, anxiety, bad choices in men and so on as the typical woman. But this was a particularly braindead moment especially since Bridget gets so many opportunities to revise her assessment of his story. Let’s not even get into why she just happens to run into Mark again and again everywhere.

Renée Zellweger plays Bridget with enough charm and spunk to keep the film interesting despite its predictability. The mix of crude stereotypes and rude humor work reasonably well. I even enjoyed the use of pop music to direct the audience’s emotions, at least until they overdid it. The male leads are far less interesting to me. Mark pretty much has no personality by design, being the distant and cold figure who inexplicably falls for Bridget anyway. Daniel on the other hand oozes with personality but gives off every warning signal of being a bad boy. I was however irked by the side-plot involving Bridget’s mother. She was allowed to have an affair and be welcomed back afterwards without repercussions. The film effectively treats this as another form of female fantasy which feels just wrong to me.

Obviously this isn’t a film that is very appealing to me and that is because it wasn’t made for me at all. I won’t begrudge women enjoying their own fantasy as men already have plenty of media that cater to them. It is fairly entertaining and I suppose with the number of sequels that have been made so far, it continues to be successful.