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BRIDGET
JONES - THE EDGE OF REASON
3/10
UK
(UK-US-Ire-Fr) 2004 : Beeban KIDRON : 105 mins
When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly
it borders on the
ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some parts of Edmund Burke's
Sublime and
Beautiful, is like a windmill just visible in a fog, which imagination
might distort into
a flying mountain, or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.
Thomas Paine, The
Age of Reason (final footnote)
What has this
quote to do with Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason? Sweet FA,
except that during the long stretches of tedium that punctuate this dire
cash-in sequel the mind drifts, the title shifts, and we find ourselves
imagining an alternate universe where Charlie Kaufman was hired to adapt
Helen Fielding's book, misheard the instruction, took another of his dizzying
left-field turns and handed in Bridget Jones - The Age of Reason
in which Renee Zellweger's frumpy bachelorette was transported back in
time to the Enlightenment and wound up bedding the eminently eligible
Paine. Actually, that quotation isn't entirely unapposite as it does contain
the word "ridiculous." Other words that come to mind while watching
Edge of Reason: embarrassing, lifeless, mirthless, tiresome, uninspired,
non-event, lobotomised, smug.
What on earth
went wrong? Bridget
Jones's Diary from 2001 was pretty good as romantic comedies go
- Zellweger not only deserved her Oscar nod for her skilful comic performance,
she arguably had more right to claim the prize than any of her fellow
nominees. This time she's stuck with an inert, sub-sitcommish script credited
to four separate scriptwriters (BJD's Fielding, Andrew Davies and
Richard Curtis joined by Adam Brooks) and whose dialogue is littered with
the gratingly fakey vocabulary familiar from previous excursions into
the caricature-populated fantasy kingdom that is Curtis-land - "shag",
"snog", "loo", "twit", etc.
Kidron brings
the resulting mess to the screen with a bare minimum of expertise - she
certainly doesn't show much in the way of comic flair, and gets completely
lost on those unfortunate occasions when the screenplay calls for slapstick
(there's a skiing mishap that one sincerely hopes is forever shielded
from Michael Crawford's gaze.) When in doubt, she slathers the soundtrack
with muzak or reaches for some thuddingly appropriate MOR pop cut from
the likes of Joss Stone: Edge of Reason often feels like a bad
soundtrack in search of a movie.
The episodic,
thin story takes up where BJD left off: our heroine has rejected
the smarmy charms of Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and gone off into the
sunset with her nicey-nicey beloved Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). But after
a few weeks Bridget starts to wonder whether she's cut out for a long-term
relationship, and suspects that the dishy Darcy may be carrying on with
shapely colleague Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett). Laborious low-farce shenanigans
dutifully ensue, including one jaw-droppingly tasteless sequence in which
Bridget is banged up in a Thai women's prison.
High spots
are unforgiveably few and far between, though Grant somehow manages to
emerge with his dignity intact and there's an amusing five-second cameo
from TV newsreader Jeremy Paxman. But that's about it - talented performers
like Neil Pearson, Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent are woefully underused,
while poor Shirley Henderson proves once again that she's become something
of a walking bad-script magnet. And the two central lovebirds very rapidly
outstay their welcome - Bridget's relentless whingeing soon fritters away
any residual goodwill from the first film, and one hopes for the sake
of Zellweger's career that Fielding resists the temptation to pen a third
Jones novel. "There's nothing funny in this at all!"
someone petulantly yelps at one stage, showing a piercing insight into
the whole sorry affair of which Tom Paine would surely be proud.
25th October,
2004
[seen 7th October : Odeon, Nuneaton : press show - CinemaDays
event]
by Neil
Young
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