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    Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    I can’t recall ever seeing a drop in quality as significant as the one between “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and the sequel “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”. It’s as if this film came from a different dimension, like the Anti-Matter Universe or Bizarro World.

    Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) has been dating Mark Darcy (Collin Firth) for six consecutive weeks and he is smitten. Her dream world comes crashing down when she becomes convinced that he is having an affair with his colleague Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett) They break up and Bridget finds herself tempted by her old flame Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) Once again, Bridget is in a position where she has to choose between which man she wants in her life.

    The hack writer behind this film evidently had no idea what made the first one good. What drew me into the first film was Bridget. She’s an everyman kinda gal. She has ambitions and insecurities, she hits some rough patches, isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but manages all right overall. Just six weeks of steady dating and her brain has turned to mush. When the movie began and I saw her jump out of a plane and struggle with her parachute, I figured “It’s just nerves”. The further in, the more obvious it became that this woman must be recovering from an unfortunate archery practice gone horribly wrong that resulted in her receiving half a dozen shafts to the head. She’s been dating Mark for six weeks... and she’s already wondering when he’s going to propose. She sees him with another woman and immediately assumes that he’s cheating. She breaks up with him and considers getting back together with the man that broke her heart and cheated on her not that long ago. It’s as if my Butterfree just degenerated back into a Metapod. Characters are supposed to evolve and grow, not revert back to their original state!

    “The Edge of Reason” is like a parody of the first film, with elements ripped right out of it and twisted around. A good example is a confrontation between Mark and Daniel. In the first film, Mark was shown as uptight, very stern and almost robotic in his emotions. When he went ballistic and picked a fight with his former best friend it meant something. It showed that being with Bridget was something big. It brought forth feelings buried deep inside out into the open. When the two guys get into a prolonged tussle in this film, it makes him look like a psychopath. That’s two fights he’s gotten into within maybe... 6 months, tops. This is not a charming quirk that comes up when emotions are high; it’s a pattern! Does he solve all of his problems by beating up people?

    Even if I was able to let go of the cheap jokes (there’s a really lazy one about a prostitute that I saw coming from miles away) and the contrived plot, this film does to feminism what “Eight Crazy Nights” did to animation and Chanukah. “The Edge of Reason” would have you believe that women are marriage-obsessed wackos whose sole desire is to trap men into wedlock so they can pump out babies. In a move so blatantly sexist I almost have to admire it, there is even a scene in which Bridget Jones delivers “salvation” to a group of women in a Thai prison. What are these gifts? Underwear, makeup and books about how women and men are different. I’m no expert on Thailand. What I do know is that they have the death penalty there and that if you are incarcerated, you are not happy. Why would they be excited for “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”? It doesn’t make any sense. This film goes out of its way to show you that Bridget Jones, and consequently anyone that associates with her is nothing without a relationship.

    I could have summarized how awful this film is simply by quoting some of the special features on the DVD. There’s a quiz game that allows you to answer a variety of multiple choice questions in order to figure out if Mark, Daniel or neither is right for you. You tell me “When should a man propose? ” A. Never. A wedding ring would put other men off. B. Any time after the first date. C. Preferable while he hasn’t got another girlfriend on the go. ” What kind of question is that?!

    “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” is embarrassing to watch, it feels like it was directed by someone with an agenda. I can picture Beeban Kidron making a follow-up to “Bridget Jones’s” so bad it would kill any chance of a franchise moving forward to spite his wife. Not satisfied with just this, he went out of his way to undo everything that happened in the first story. It almost amuses me in a way, like if a teenage frat house decided that they needed to fund a statue dedicated to the man who killed Adolf Hitler (who commited suicide if you didn’t know)

    I have to admit that sitting with my friend and explaining to her why “Edge of Reason” is mind-blowingly awful, I had a good time with it. Is it “So Bad it’s good again” when paired with the first? I’m considering it. If you want some laughs and then want to die of embarrassment, watch the two films back to back. Take a break after the wonderful “Bridget Jones’s Diary” to comment on how sharply it is written, how it adapts “Pride and Prejudice” with flair and how pleasant and down-to-earth Renée Zellweger’s character is. Then watch this film and ask the people you’re with “What were they thinking?! ” Under any other circumstances, I can’t recommend “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”. (Full-screen version on DVD, April 29, 2015)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  17.9.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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