Baby’s Got Back

BRIDGET JONES’S charm lay in giving us a glimpse of ourselves on screen. Struggling with weight, struggling with self-worth, struggling with love, and confused about all of it. Does it really work when Bridget has two equally nice men fighting over her, has a good job, a string of reliable friends, and is finally pregnant?

The good news is that Bridget Jones’s Baby is almost there when it comes to still getting the best laughs out of terrible and everyday romantic situations, and that Zellweger is back in the groove unaffected by the recent controversy around her — even embracing it, you may say, given the references to “geriatric” mothers.

Firth again plays Mark, the one true love of Bridget’s life who is forever out of reach, while Dempsey is American millionaire Jack, who rescues her after she has fallen face down into a mud pool. Adorable as Dempsey is, despite being a mathematician who has made his money “figuring out the quantum equations for love”, it is unclear what really attracts him to Bridget. The film makes no effort to establish a relationship that is, after all, meant to pose a competition to Mark, the eternal Mr Darcy of Pride and Prejudice.

Maguire returns as director after Bridget Jones’s Diary, while Helen Fielding, the author of the books on which the films are based, has co-written the script.

Once the film enters the latter months of pregnancy, and Bridget continues to be unsure who among Mark and Jack fathered her child, the film leaves the zone of fun and enters the area of incredulousness. And that is despite Thompson (who also co-wrote the film), playing the hands down hilarious and no-nonsense gynaecologist, guiding the three of them along. Bridget doesn’t have an easy time having that child. It is a labour — of love, still — for the rest of us too.