Bridget
Jones’s Diary. Dir. Sharon Mcguire. Perf. Renee Zellweger,
High Grant, Collin Firth Miramax, 2001. DVD.
(Personal Star Rating 3 out 4).
Overall,
Bridget Jones’s Diary was a hilarious
take on Pride and Prejudice. The film
focuses around Bridget, a thirty-something woman who is fed up with being a
single, over thirty spinster who drinks and smokes too much. The story follows
her through her journey of self-discovery where she meets some interesting
bumps in the road. While often wondering throughout the movie how relevant it
was to Pride and Prejudice, the
similarities are there, just perhaps spiced up a bit and made for more of an
adult audience.
Zellweger
plays a decent Elizabeth Bennet, although she possesses bad habits, a much more
crude vocabulary and wardrobe, and puts much more emphasis on her hope for
marriage in the near future. Darcy is introduced to us at a New Year’s party
hosted by Bridget’s parents. Bridget immediately thinks Darcy is arrogant and
rude, and is appalled by his reindeer sweater. Darcy believes Bridget is a
horrible, chain smoking drunk, and is overheard telling his mother so by
Bridget herself, much like how Elizabeth overhears Darcy talking about her.
After this point we are introduced to Daniel Cleaver
(representative of Wickham) who plays Bridget’s boss, as well as lover. The
similarities between Cleaver and Wickham are quickly noticeable. Cleaver easily
wins Bridget over with his charm and his ability to spill the beans about his
life so easily (well, except for when he was cheating on her with a business
partner; that must’ve slipped his mind at the time). When he and Bridget go to
dinner for the first time, Cleaver is more than happy to inform Bridget of
Darcy’s role in ruining his first marriage, much like Wickham is inclined to
tell Elizabeth how Darcy ruined his life. We then get the line from Bridget,
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that when something is going good
something is bound to go wrong.” Sound somewhat familiar? Of course, things do
go south rather quickly, and we do have a couple of more similarities in the
film of the book. Darcy professes his love for Bridget, Bridget later finds out
the truth of what really happened between Darcy and Cleaver, and, like
Pride and Prejudice, Darcy and the woman
he loves live happily ever after. The real issue with this movie is that I
don’t think it was meant to be a very accurate interpretation of the novel
itself. Independently it’s a wonderfully funny work, but I can’t say whether Austen
herself would give this one two thumbs up.
It’s hard to imagine Zellweger as Elizabeth, and her sisters are absent
from the film all together.
Her father
plays a minute role, though you can feel the closeness between them. We still
get the eccentric mother, but she leaves Bridget’s father for most of the film
to sell jewelry on television, which doesn’t follow the novel whatsoever.
Bridget seems more interested in getting married than her mother does in
getting her married.
Bridget Jones’s Diary puts a
strong emphasis on the idea of marriage, which is, arguably, the main focus in Pride and Prejudice. Throughout the
entire first third of the movie, Bridget daydreams about marrying Daniel
Cleaver and having that ever-after. This is where Bridget and Elizabeth truly
differ; Bridget’s focus throughout the film is finding “the one,” and Elizabeth
didn’t seem as interested in conforming to the idea of being someone’s wife.
Though her mother doesn’t push her to marry, the underlying feeling of wanting
her daughter Bridget to be with someone is
still felt. The entire movie is completely surrounded by relationships and
heading to the altar.
The
story of Bridget is put together in such a satirical manner that it makes you
wonder if the people in the story are truly interested in marriage, or if
they’re just making fun of the idea of marriage and all it stands for. To add
to the satire, there’s also of Mr. Darcy who, conveniently, is also named Mr.
Darcy in the film. Both Darcys are made out as bad guys when the audience is
first introduced to them, yet they make up for their first hateful comments by
falling madly in love with the main character in both the film and the movie.
The satire goes so far as to place Darcy and Cleaver (the man who bears strong
similarities to Wickham) together in a knock-down, drag-out fight in the middle
of a busy area. The bottom line in the film, much like the movie is that the
people who marry seem to be miserable, the people searching for love are
miserable, and the people who are to the point where they are just along for
life’s ride are the ones who end up happy when it’s all over.
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