Bridget Jones's Baby - Review

Bridget Jones is iconic. The walking chaos of a woman that struggles with overweight, her cigarette addiction, her fondness to alcohol, her carrier and of course her lovelife is a legend. Four books and two movies were published so far following Bridget through her chaotic life trying to be a better person. Now, we have movie number three.

The very beginning of Bridget Jones's Baby already makes a lovely reference to the first movie and the iconic scene of Bridget (Renee Zellweger) all alone in her apartment in London lip-syncing „All by myself“, but that path is broken again very quickly when she decides to put on another song and have actual fun instead of pitying herself once again – that's right, Bridget has grown, she is a lot more selfconfident, yet loveably awkward in her selfconfidence. We see a woman in her early fourties, she managed to have her desired weight and she stopped smoking, she is succesful in her job as a TV producer, her colleagues like her, but she is still single – which doesn't seem to be a problem at all. Only her friends, all married and parents, remind her that they have something that she doesn't and that she admits to truly want. Still, this Bridget can wait, this Bridget lives for the moment, this Bridget decides that first of all, she wants to have sex, nothing romantic. She finds that with Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey), an American guy she meets at a music festival – and a few days later with her ex Mark Darcey (Colin Firth), who is going to divorce his wife and admits to missing her. So far, so good, but Bridgets idea of safe sex is age-old vegan condoms that have been in her purse forever and that are more than expired, and lucky as she is, she ends up pregnant.

She tells both men about her situation but misses to mention that she isn't exactly sure who the father is. Both are delighted and see a possible future with Bridget. When they find out about each other, both try their best to help her throughout her pregnancy, each in their own way. The still very starched Mark and the free-spirited Jack are perfect opposites and thus passive-aggressively try to win Bridget over.

Inbetween all that, a new boss has taken over the TV show that Bridget works for, and Bridget has to work even harder to adapt to the new, hip and trendy ideas that are now the image of her workplace.

Let's talk details: London has changed since the early 2000s, and it is portraied perfectly in the movie, from the more subtle streetfood carts that are placed in the background in front of Bridgets place to the right in your face hipsters with bowties, beards and buns that are her new colleagues. This is also a really good method to show that Bridget is becoming older, additionally to the fact that instead of dinner parties she is going to christenings. Bridget Jones is not fully up to date anymore – and that's okay.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Another great point is that we see the funeral of Daniel Cleaver. With that, a perfectly reasonable explaination is given to why he isn't in this movie and he gets a last hoorah with loads of young, beautiful women that are all a bit alienated by all the other young, beautiful women attending.

Mark is still working as an attorney, this time he is defending a band of young women that are a reference to the Russian punk band Pussy Riot. Not once, the issue is mocked, but rather the ways the band fights for their rights (being loud and sometimes naked) and the way no one really seems to actually care what they are fighting for (Mark doesn't particularily like their ways but tries really hard to make clear that free speech and womens rights are serious topics).

Last but not least: Bridget marries Mark, the father to her son, at the end of the movie – and the couple is still good friends with Jack. It is great to see this love triangle being resolved peacefully and no one being the actual bad guy – another thing that shows how much the characters have grown.

END OF SPOILERS

Overall, this is the new Bridget that has changed but still stayed herself. She became older, London became hipper, but the charme of early-2000s British rom-com has been preserved well into the 2010s. It surely wouldn't be beating a dead horse to make yet another Bridget Jones movie showing her as a chaotic mother and wife – because if there is one thing not dead, it is Bridget Jones.