Third time Bridget’s right note

Renee Zellweger and Patrick Dempsey and a Cinderella moment from the third Bridget Jones.

By Tania Phillips

THERE is something familiarly comfortable and yet actually pretty entertaining about the third story in the Bridget Jones trilogy.
Like a teddy with its fur worn off or an old pair of slippers, it’s nice to welcome back old friend Bridget – once the world’s favourite singleton despairing about being overweight and over 30 and single – back into our lives.
In the third instalment (co-written by Emma Thompson who pretty much has some of the best lines as Bridget’s doctor) Bridget has long broken up with Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) – Bridget Jones’s (Renee Zellweger) “happily ever after” hasn’t quite gone according to plan. She’s forty-something and single again, and she decides to focus on her job as a news producer and surround herself with old friends and new. For once, Bridget has everything completely under control which is actually nice to finally see – of course this is where it all goes wrong and she finds herself pregnant and wondering if the father is Darcy or Patrick Dempsey’s American billionaire.
What ensues is a fairly accurate take on the state of the media (and it’s nice to see that Bridget is now mostly competent and intelligent and actually good at her job) and some pretty funny physical comedy – Dempsey, Firth and a pregnant Bridget in a revolving door.
The acting is great, particularly from Dempsey who breathes new life into what could have been a tired and entirely too formulaic movie. He is funny and debonair with just the right amount of emotion to have you wanting him end up with Bridget as much as Mr Darcy.