The other day I was watching Bridget Jones' Baby, the third in the rom-com series starring Renée Zellweger, and I was deeply distracted... The men were hardly recognizable! Colin Firth? I hardly know her! Sure it's been a full 12 years since the last Bridget Jones movie (the entirely forgettable The Edge of Reason) and 15 years since the first, but where was the dashing young man in the adorkable Christmas sweater? I thought: He doesn't not just look like Colin Firth anymore, he doesn't even look like Mark Darcy! Can I even go to the movies and believe that this is the SAME GUY who swept Bridget off her feet so many years ago? The same guy who won her affections against Hugh Grant, of all people? His chin is now slightly droopier, his hair grayer, his eyes clouded and weathered. I know we go into movies with a suspension of disbelief, but at some point you're asking TOO much of your audience. Goddamn!
I mean, forget about Jim Broadbent! Ancient! Is that Bridget's father or a talking corpse—who knows? What about Hugh Grant, you ask? [Mild spoiler] They kill him off in the first FIVE MINUTES of the movie, and we find Bridget and Mr. Darcy at his funeral, adorned with a photo of young Hugh Grant—emphasis on YOUNG. Nice one, Bridget Jones' Baby. It's probably because present-day Hugh Grant can't make a believable Daniel Cleaver, you know, with his face all different looking from 15 years ago. But Bridget Jones' Baby still makes you sit through two hours of Colin Firth, asking us to simply accept the fact that it's the same guy.
Don't worry, someone actually wrote a piece like this, not targeting the male leads of Bridget Jones' Baby, of course, but about Renée Zellweger's changed face, about how it's hard to believe she's still Bridget Jones because she looks so wildly different. Wildly different. The writer, Owen Gleiberman, suggests that in changing her appearance, Zellweger has taken something away from him. Excuse me, what? Sir, this is not about you. Not to mention the insanity of being so invested in a woman's mildly changed face. After seeing the movie for myself, I can you tell you... Renée Zellweger looks... perfectly fine. She looks like herself, and thus she looks like Bridget Jones—except, of course, she's 15 years older. As you may or may not know, that'll add age to a person's face. The one hold up, if that, is perhaps her body. In the first two movies, her characterization was built on the fact that she's a little plump (Zellweger originally gained 25 pounds for the role), but now her body looks BANGIN'—something she addresses in voiceover early in the movie. (Werk!) Even her post-baby body is bangin'. But at the end of the day, Renée Zellweger really just looks like a woman of her age (47 years old), a woman reprising a role more than a decade later. Colin Firth looks fine, too. Patrick Dempsey is, like, hot I suppose. And Jim Broadbent looks better than ever.
There's nothing to be shocked by here, nothing to make you suspend your disbelief, except perhaps you'll find yourself surprised by how delightful Bridget Jones' Baby is. It completely charmed me, and it might completely charm you too. In the third film, Bridget finds herself single again—a relationship status we're familiar seeing her in—this time 43 years old and feeling left out because all her friends are married with children. By a funny twist of fate, she finds herself in a similar situation when she gets the positive pregnancy result herself. How does our girl go from single to baby mama? She meets a hot American startup bro (Dempsey) and has unrealistically hot sex in his fancy yurt at a music festival. Mere days later, she rekindles her romance with—you guessed it—Mr. Darcy when they end up at the same wedding and he reveals he's getting a divcorce (is it still a one-night stand if you've had a serious relationship with the dude?). Against all odds, Bridget gets pregnant and the movie is her balancing act between the two men while trying to figure out which one the father is. But the biological answer won't necessarily answer which one Bridget falls in love with, and the movie also takes us to a familiar territory of torridness as before: watching Bridget and Mr. Darcy go through a "will they or won't they" again. They may have years worth of chemistry, but it hasn't worked in the past for a reason. So will she choose the charming American man? BRIDGET YOU'RE TEARING UP OUR HEARTS AGAIN! (I won't spoil who she chooses—if she even chooses at all.)
Whichever man you root for, at the end of the day it's most fun rooting for Bridget herself. Most of all, I'm very, very here for Renée Zellweger's return to the big screen—no matter how she looks in 2016. After all, her face doesn't belong to you or me, and it certainly doesn't belong to Owen Gleiberman. I hope they make more Bridget Jones movies starring Renée Zellweger looking like however the hell Renée Zellweger wants to look.
