Bridget Jones has a perfect six-week run with Mark Darcy. Then she goes to Thailand with her ex, Daniel Cleaver, and the whole thing falls apart. “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” is a sequel that knows exactly what to borrow from the last film and what to break. It’s funny, it’s romantic, and it’s a little mean to the audience who came for the mush. The movie is a mess, but it’s a mess you can enjoy.
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Mark Darcy’s Assistant
The whole film turns on Mark Darcy’s assistant, Rebecca Gillies. Bridget meets her and reads her as a threat to the relationship. That’s the setup. It’s a simple one, but it works because the film commits to it completely. Bridget spends the rest of the movie on edge, and the script keeps feeding her reasons to be.
Daniel Cleaver gets a bigger role this time. He’s the ex who offers to co-host a travel show with Bridget, and she has to sit down with him despite her declaration that he’s a “deceitful, sexist, disgusting specimen of humanity.” The setup is perfect. The execution is less so. The film keeps giving Daniel chances to charm Bridget, and it keeps giving her reasons to say no.
The Law Council Dinner Debacle
Bridget gets invited to the Law Council dinner with Mark, and she’s convinced he’s going to propose afterwards. Instead, the evening turns into a disaster. Bridget makes a critical error on a trivia question about Madonna, and Rebecca wins. Bridget stomps off. Mark comes to her apartment, apologises, and tells her he loves her for the first time. He invites her on a ski-break in Lech, Austria.
That’s the high point of the film. The ski-break is where the romance is allowed to breathe. It’s the one stretch where the film stops worrying about the setup and just lets the characters be themselves. Bridget learns Rebecca is there on the slopes with a few colleagues. Bridget has a pregnancy scare, but after an argument about raising and educating their hypothetical children, a test proves negative. The film then cuts back to England, where Bridget and Mark attend a lunch with their parents.
The Parents and the Breakup
The lunch with the parents is where Bridget gets hurt most. Mark dismisses questions about marriage, and Bridget overhears a message from Rebecca on his answering machine. She breaks up with him. She travels to Thailand with Shazzer and Daniel to film The Smooth Guide, and the three of them visit several exotic locations.
That’s the plot in full. It’s a plot driven by jealousy, by professional rivalry, and by the simple fact that Bridget can’t stop thinking about Daniel. The film trusts its audience to know exactly what this means.
The Thailand Trip
The Thailand trip is where the film gets most interesting. Bridget and Daniel visit several locations. After she unintentionally consumes psilocybin mushrooms, they reconnect, but the source text cuts off at that point. What happens next isn’t given here. The film itself doesn’t say, and this review can’t fill in the gap.
The mushrooms are the film’s most daring choice. It’s a practical joke played on the audience, but it works in the text given.
What’s Missing
The film doesn’t go far enough with its setup. It promises a rivalry between Mark and Rebecca, and it promises a romance with Daniel. It gives Bridget reasons to be jealous, and then it lets those reasons go unresolved. The film ends with Bridget and Daniel reconnecting, but the movie never makes clear what that means for the story that comes next. It’s a sequel with a cliffhanger, and the cliffhanger is left hanging.
The film also doesn’t quite know what to do with its supporting cast. Jim Broadbent plays Bridget’s dad, Gemma Jones plays her mum, Jacinda Barrett plays Rebecca, Jim Broadbent plays Dad, Gemma Jones plays Mum, Shirley Henderson plays Jude, James Callis plays Tom, Neil Pearson plays Richard Finch, and Sally Phillips plays Shazzer. They’re all there, but they don’t get much to do.
The Verdict
“Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” is a solid sequel. It’s not a great one. The film is funny, well-acted, and full of the kind of romantic chaos that made the first film work. But it’s also missing a clear sense of purpose. It’s a movie that’s chasing the same setup as the last film, and it never quite finds a new one.
The film deserves credit for its ambition. It’s a sequel that wants to be bigger and more ambitious than its predecessor, and it mostly succeeds at that. It’s a comedy that takes its romantic setup seriously enough that the jokes land harder. But ambition isn’t the same as success, and “The Edge of Reason” is the kind of sequel that works best when you’re watching it, and less well when you think about it.
The film is at its best when it’s simply letting Bridget be Bridget. The ski-break, the Law Council dinner, the lunch with the parents. Those are the scenes where the film’s confidence shows through. They’re also the scenes where the film takes its time and trusts its own logic.
The film is at its worst when it’s trying to be a bigger story. The Thailand trip, the mushrooms, the setup with Rebecca. Those are the stretches where the film breaks its own rules. The film doesn’t have enough room to resolve the setup, and it shows.
“Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” is a film that knows what it wants to be, and it gets most of the way there. It’s a sequel that deserves its audience, and it deserves to be remembered for its best stretches rather than its worst. It’s a movie that’s funny, romantic, and a little mean, and it’s a movie that’s worth watching.
Key Facts Box
– Director: Beeban Kidron
– Writers: Andrew Davies, Helen Fielding, Richard Curtis, Adam Brooks
– Runtime: 108 minutes
– Release: 28 October in Australia, 12 November in UK and US
– Cast: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Sally Phillips, Celia Imrie, Shirley Henderson, James Callis, Neil Pearson
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