Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Oh, Bridget. How could you do this to me? I'm sure you even think you have some kind of surname this time out, like "Bridget Jones: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" or "Bridget Jones: X-treme Antix" but you don't, Bridget, to me you are just 2 and all of the shoddy, success-milking, cynical pleasure-laundering it implies.Bridget, I believed in you. I believed that your first movie was not just a guilty pleasure but a properly good romantic comedy, maybe not quite His Girl Friday but possibly as good as anything Janeane Garofalo ever did, maybe somewhat better. (No offense to Janeane, it's just that Coco has declared a Janeane Garofalo exception to the inherent badness of romantic comedies, which I of course reject.) Oh, Bridget, when you sang along to "All By Myself" (or was it another one?) I wept and giggled with you too. Granted, I had the same feeling when they all get in the car at the end of "Notting Hill", which everybody hated, but you told me I could defend that blatant, but not, here, cynical manipulation of great music in the service of comic heartstringpulling.
But here we are. To whomever allowed this drek to surface, and to myself, for succumbing to its lure when there was not, in fact, a 9:40 showing of Alfie down in Sarasota: shame. Because if you're going to string together a series of barely motivated comic set pieces, each one either embarrassingly scant or regurgitated from your memories of the first one; if you're going to abuse Renee Zellwegger's amazing willingness to go along with whatever self-abuse you can throw at her; if you're going to deny that Hugh Grant is a little older looking (which needn't be so bad); THEN YOU MUST AT LEAST BE A LITTLE FUNNY.
And when you're not, it makes it harder for me to argue against Coco and his stupid bias.
Hugh Grant was very sexy on the plane ride over, though, I will admit.
posted by Josh K-sky at
6:32 PM
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