[Early Review] Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016)

Director: Sharon Maguire
Cast: Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Gemma Jones, Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson
Screenplay: Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, Emma Thompson
122 mins. Rated R for language, sex references and some nudity.

Nobody was more excited for Bridget Jones’s Baby than…my fiance. Me? Meh. While I mildly enjoyed Bridget Jones’s Diary, I had nothing but bad things to say about The Edge of Reason, so now, some twelve years since we last saw Bridget, was I excited? No. Did I end up enjoying it? Perhaps.

Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger, Chicago, Case 39) has finally reached her ideal weight, but that doesn’t seem to be solving any of her other problems, especially in her love life. So when a work friend drags Bridget to an outdoor music festival, she meets and spends the night with Jack (Patrick Dempsey, TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, Transformers: Dark of the Moon). A week later, she reunites with her ex Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, The King’s Speech, Kingsman: The Secret Service). Then, the shocker: Bridget Jones is pregnant, but she has no idea who the daddy is or what to do with the two men who now want her heart.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this: I actually enjoyed Bridget Jones’s Baby. Way more than I thought I would. I found Jack Qwant to be a much more interesting foil to Mark Darcy. I like that Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver is dealt with in an interesting way that allows his absence to not halter the film’s progression. I even enjoyed the surprising celebrity cameo.

Now, I had plenty of problems with the film. I felt like the first act of the film takes way too long to get going. You know the film is called Bridget Jones’s Baby, so you know she is having a baby, but it takes so long to set it up that it does lose focus. The finale also has the opportunity to take a few risks but instead the plot takes a safe route and the film suffers for it.

Some of the best moments from Bridget Jones’s Baby had me laughing out loud in the theater and they were scenes that featured in the trailer but worked so much better in the finished film. The cast all know their characters well by now and the new additions like Dempsey and Emma Thompson (Love Actually, A Walk in the Woods) as Dr. Rawlings fit in nicely. Altogether, it’s a fitting conclusion to this trilogy of sorts that should work for fans of the original.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe