BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY

The colossal success of Helen Fielding’s accursed Diary – a bogstandard filler broadsheet column turned bestselling phenomenon – might represent the single greatest setback to gender equality since Jane Austen started shifting copies by the bucketload, but there’s no arguing with its sales figures, and the inevitable movie spin-off looks certain to pack them in for weeks to come. The ‘novel’, and its attendant sequel, single-handedly spawned a new literary genre (‘spinster fiction’), in which professional women become professional victims: it trades heavily in maudlin self-absorption, embittered man-hatred and obsessive calorie-counting, and the mixture has inexplicably struck a huge chord with millions.

This otherwise thoroughly-British affair stars transplanted Texan Renee Zellweger in the Bridget Jones role: she has obviously gone to great lengths (widths?) to fatten up for the part, and successfully adopted a hideous Sloane accent. She plays Jones as a whiny, narcissistic heroine utterly obsessed with the surface details of her life (age 31, weight 9st-plus, status single), who spends her days slaving away for some PR firm, and her nights guzzling chardonnay and wondering why all men are bastards.

For all the superficial nods to modernity (she’s a career girl, you know!) it becomes very clear very early on that the film’s morals (and indeed plot) are straight out of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:- Bridget obviously wants her ideal man to be smart, funny, handsome, considerate and successful, but mainly the latter. Ergo, she ditches every vestige of self-respect at the merest hint of a man in a Respectable Income Bracket: Austen herself would have been proud.

We join Bridget at a party in her parents’ place: said folks go to embarrassing and counter-productive extremes to introduce her to prospective partners, and on this occasion, she’s presented to serious-faced moper Mark (Firth), who’s sane enough to steer clear of her. Soon after, she turns her attention to an e-mail relationship with her slimeball boss Daniel (Grant) – and, before you know it, they’re engaging in anal sex. But there’s just one problem: he’s an inconsiderate bastard (aren’t they all?) and sure enough, she eventually discovers him in flagrante with another female colleague, prompting her to walk out on him and her job.

She goes on to carve out a career in TV, presenting serious ‘issue’ programmes about refugees and the like – in the course of which duty she runs into aforementioned mopey-features Mark. He seems like a stuffed shirt of the highest order, but he turns out to be a high-flying barrister (!!!), and the look on Jones’ face when she hears as much has to be seen to be believed. From here on in, the film slowly descends into hell.

Oddly enough, given the heroine’s prissiness, Bridget Jones’ Diary is so rife with pathetic nudge-nudge-wink-wink Britcom that it often resembles prime Carry On, with such comic delights as arse-groping gags and tarts-and-vicars parties providing what passes for humour. Meanwhile, womanhood is defined almost entirely as an obsession with thigh size and the shedding of ‘singleton’ status – Jones is by no means the nastiest character you’ll ever encounter, but she is so enslaved by a tyranny of her own making that you reckon she might be better off under the Taliban.

Zellweger, you’ve got to credit, nails her character on the head, but this doesn’t make her any easier to put up with. Hugh Grant ditches his trademark ‘oh, bugger’ routine in favour of sleazeball smarm, which at least provides two minutes’ worth of curiosity value, but poor old Colin Firth (Fever Pitch) has to be without doubt the least charismatic screen presence of all time. The whole affair culminates in horribly conventional fashion, leaving everything ominously set up for a sequel, were it not for the thankful fact that the follow-up book (The Edge of Reason) has sold fuck-all compared to the first. If this infernal creation ever crops up on our screens again, I urge us all to head for the hills.