Movie Review: "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" (2004)

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Movie: "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"
Director: Beeban Kidron
Year: 2004
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Another year in the love life of Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) as told by her.

"Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" is the follow-up film to "Bridget Jones's Diary," and much like its predecessor, is based on a book by Helen Fielding. Beeban Kidron takes over directorial duties for this sequel. The entire cast returns to this installment in the franchise, including Renée Zellweger as the titular Bridget Jones, who is now in a relationship with Mark Darcy, played again by Colin Firth. Also returning in a somewhat smaller but still prevalent capacity is Hugh Grant, who reprises his role as the womanizing, self-centered Daniel Cleaver. Despite this film coming out a whopping three years after the original, the story starts a mere six weeks after the events of the first film as Bridget chronicles another year in her life/love life, only this time, the three main actors look like they have aged three years, not six weeks. They're not really fooling anyone.

Much like its predecessor, "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" all starts with a curry party and a stupid, goofy jumper. There are a lot of callbacks and recycled humor from the first film, and the entire thing might even follow a near exact plot, except instead of being lonely, Bridget is now in a relationship. This movie mostly involves Bridget bumbling about, falling down with her bum jutting towards the camera. As per usual, she regularly makes a fool of herself (almost always in public) and suffers from severe foot-in-mouth disease. She has some tribulations in her relationship as she feels inadequate being around the cohorts of her semi-stodgy upper-class boyfriend. She is also completely jealous of his leggy assistant Rebecca, played by Jacinda Barrett, who, thanks to her friends, she believes is having an affair with Mark.

Much of the charm and wit of the first installment has been completely sucked out of this sequel. It seems far more reliant on slapstick than on cleverness. The chemistry which once existed between Zellweger, Firth, and Grant is now mysteriously depleted as well, something that wouldn't have happened if they really *did* film the sequel a mere six weeks later. Nothing feels organic now and everything feels like a blatant attempt to get cheap laughs that never come from the unfunny material presented in this film. This is not to say it is completely void of humor as there are some sparse moments of genuine laughter, but more often than not, we found ourselves chuckling at just how predictably bad this cash cow truly is.

This sequel is massive tumble down from the chemistry, wit, charm, and likability we saw in "Bridget Jones's Diary." Now, many years later, a new sequel is on the docket, scheduled for a September 16th, 2016 release, and in a year with many, many terrible and long-oft sequels, well, we can't say we have much hope for this new film, but we're willing to be surprised. It can't get much worse than "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason."

My Rating: 4/10
BigJ's Rating: 4.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 5.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 27%
Do we recommend this movie: No.