2001 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire
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Bridget Jones's Diary premiered on 4 April 2001 in the United Kingdom and was released to theatres on 13 April 2001 simultaneously in the United Kingdom and in the United States. It opened to positive reviews and massive box office receipts, grossing over $280 million worldwide. Critics praised Maguire's direction, the screenplay, the film's lighthearted tone, and Zellweger's titular performance which garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Over the years, it has been hailed as a cult film as well as part of the English pop culture with Bridget Jones being cited as a British culture icon.
Bridget Jones is 32, single, engagingly imperfect, and worried about her weight. She works at a publishing company in London where her main focus is fantasizing about her handsome boss, Daniel Cleaver.
At her parents' New Year party, Bridget is introduced to Mark Darcy, a childhood acquaintance and barrister, son of her parents' friends. Mark finds Bridget foolish and vulgar and Bridget thinks Mark is arrogant and rude, and is disgusted by his novelty Christmasjumper. Overhearing Mark grumble to his mother about her attempt to set him up with "a verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and dresses like her mother", Bridget decides to turn her life around. She begins keeping a diary to chronicle her attempts to stop smoking, stop drinking, lose weight, and find her Mr. Right.
Bridget and Daniel begin to flirt heavily at work, ahead of an important book launch, at which Bridget bumps into Mark and his glamorous but haughty colleague Natasha. Bridget leaves with Daniel and they have dinner, despite Daniel's notorious reputation as a womaniser. Daniel tells Bridget that he and Mark were formerly friends but says Mark slept with his fiancée, for which they now hate each other. Bridget and Daniel start dating.
Bridget is invited to a family party, originally a "Tarts & Vicars" costume party, which is tied into a mini-break weekend with Daniel. They spend the day before the party at a country inn where Mark and Natasha are also staying. The morning of the party, Daniel says he must return to London for work and leaves Bridget (dressed as a Playboy bunny) to endure the party alone. When she returns to London & drops in on Daniel, she discovers his American colleague, Lara in flagrante, naked in his flat. Bridget cuts ties with him and immediately searches for a new career. She lands a new job in television, and when Daniel pleads with her to stay, she declares that she would "rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's arse".
Bridget attends a friend's long-standing dinner party, where she is the only single person. Once again she crosses paths with Mark and Natasha. Mark privately confesses to Bridget that, despite her faults, he likes her "just as you are". Sometime later, as a well-known barrister, he allows Bridget an exclusive TV interview in a landmark legal case which boosts her career and allows her to begin to see him in a different light.
Bridget begins to develop feelings for Mark, and when she misguidedly and somewhat disastrously, attempts to cook her own birthday dinner party, he comes to her rescue. After a happy dinner celebration with Bridget's friends and Mark, a drunken Daniel arrives and temporarily monopolises Bridget's attention. Mark leaves, but returns to challenge Daniel and the two fight in the street, eventually smashing through a window of a Greek restaurant. They eventually call a draw only to have Daniel mutter "wanker" at Mark as he turns away and which only Mark can hear; Mark knocks Daniel down; shocked, Bridget chides Mark and he leaves, but after a self-serving appeal from Daniel, she rejects him as well.
Bridget's mother, Pamela, has left Bridget's father Colin and begun an affair with perma-tanned shopping channel presenter Julian. When the affair ends, she returns to the Jones's family home with an unintentional revelation: Mark and Daniel's falling-out resulted from Daniel (then Mark's best friend at Cambridge University) sleeping with Mark's wife which Mark walked in on, not the other way around.
At the Darcys' ruby wedding anniversary party the same day, Bridget confesses her feelings for Mark, only to learn that he and Natasha have accepted jobs in New York and are on the verge of an engagement, according to Mark's father. Bridget interrupts the toast with an emotionally moving speech which peters out as she realises the hopelessness of her position; her words clearly have an effect on Mark, but he still flies to New York. Bridget's friends rally to repair her broken heart with a surprise trip to Paris, but as they are about to leave, Mark appears at Bridget's flat.
Just as they are about to kiss for the first time, Bridget flies to her bedroom to change into sexier underwear. Mark peeks at her diary, finds her older unflattering opinions of him, and leaves. Bridget, realizing what he has read and that she might lose him again, runs outside after him in the snow in her tigerskin-print underwear and a skimpy jumper, but is unable to find him. Disheartened, she is about to return home when Mark appears with a new diary for her "to make a fresh start". They kiss in the snow-covered street, and Bridget remarks that "nice boys don't kiss like that", to which Mark retorts "Oh, yes, they fucking do."
Andrew Davies, screenwriter of the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, collaborated on the screenplays for the 2001 and 2004 Bridget Jones films and Crispin Bonham-Carter, who played Mr. Bingley in that adaptation, appeared in a minor roles. The self-referential in-joke between the projects convinced Colin Firth to accept the role of Mark Darcy,[5] as it gave him an opportunity to ridicule and liberate himself from his Pride and Prejudice character.[6]
Production
Working Title Films acquired the film rights of the novel in 1997 before it became a best-seller.[7]
Zellweger's casting in late May 2000 concluded a two-year search. Producer Eric Fellner explained that she "brings enormous character and conviction to the part".[13] Maguire said of Zellweger, "I saw in Renee a gift few people have, that she was able to straddle comedy and emotion."[8] Zellweger worked on her accent with Barbara Berkery, who had helped Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love.[8] She also gained 20 pounds (9kg) for the part.[14] To prepare for the role, Zellweger worked at the producers' request at London book publishers Picador as a trainee in the publicity department.[7] Before the film was released, a considerable amount of controversy surrounded the casting of the American Zellweger as what some saw as a quintessentially British heroine.[15][16] However, her performance, including her south-eastern English accent, is widely considered to be of a high standard.[17][18][19]
In July 2000, the leading male roles were given to Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.[20] The director of the film, Sharon Maguire, is one of Fielding's friends, on whom the film's character "Shazzer" (English slang for Sharon)[21] was reportedly based. In the film, Shazzer is played by Sally Phillips.
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 161 reviews, with an average rating of 6.87/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Though there was controversy over the choice of casting, Zellweger's Bridget Jones is a sympathetic, likable, funny character, giving this romantic comedy a lot of charm."[24]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[25] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[26]
Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3+1⁄2 out of 4 possible stars.[27]
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The film's soundtrack was composed by Patrick Doyle. It also features two hit songs that were released as singles, "Out of Reach" by Gabrielle and "It's Raining Men" by Geri Halliwell. The single became Halliwell's fourth consecutive number-one hit single in UK Singles Chart and it became her most successful solo single to date. "Feels Like Sex", another song from the album was originally slated as the lead single, but after "It's Raining Men" was offered to Halliwell, the song was released as the first single, and was added to Scream if You Wanna Go Faster.
Halliwell's version received positive reviews by music critics, experienced international success and hit the top ten in over two dozen countries around the world, going to number one in several of them, although it did not fare as well on the American charts. However, in the United Kingdom, "It's Raining Men" debuted at number-one on the UK Singles Chart and stayed there for two weeks. It became Halliwell's fourth consecutive number-one single in the UK, selling 155,000 units in its first week and 80,000 in its second week. Overall the single went on to sell 440,000 copies in Britain alone,[29] becoming the 13th best seller of 2001 and Halliwell's most successful single worldwide.[30]
Halliwell was inspired by the 1980 film Fame for the video. She said, "I was just watching Fame on video and I thought what a great excuse". During the video she also does ballet.[33]
Bridget Jones's Diary 2: More Music from the Motion Picture and Other V.G. Songs
Bridget Jones's Diary 2: More Music from the Motion Picture and Other V.G. Songs
The film was released on both VHS and DVD in 2001 with the UK VHS release containing over 35 minutes of bonus material which includes: Deleted Scenes, Exclusive Interviews, Bridget's Guide to "Getting It Right". There was also a UK VHS of "The Making of Bridget Jones". In 2011, a Blu-ray of the film was released. A Collector's Edition of the film was released in 2004 on DVD with new bonus material including; The Bridget Phenomenon, The Young And The Mateless, Portrait Of The Makeup Artist, Domestic and International TV Spots, Bridget Jones's Diary Reviews and A Guide to Bridget Britishism.
The film version is currently being adapted into a musical, set to hit London's West End, although no date has been set. British musician Lily Allen has written the score and lyrics, and Stephen Daldry, best known for his Tony award-winning work on the West End and Broadway productions of Billy Elliot, will be directing, joined by his co-worker Peter Darling, who will serve as choreographer.
An official cast for the production has not yet been announced, but workshops for the show have already begun with television actress and star of Legally Blonde, Sheridan Smith, in the title role.[37]
My Lovely Sam Soon, a Korean series with some thematic and narrative similarities
Related Research Articles
Bridget Jones's Diary is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic relationships.
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Colin Andrew Firth is an English actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, an European Film Award, two BAFTA Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. In 2010, Firth's portrayal of King George VI in Tom Hooper's The King's Speech won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Renée Kathleen Zellweger (, born April 25, 1969) is an American actress. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. She was one of the world's highest-paid actresses by 2007 and was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year in 2009.
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Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones, and a sequence of novels and films beginning with the life of a thirty something singleton in London trying to make sense of life and love. Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999) were published in 40 countries and sold more than 15 million copies. The two films of the same name achieved international success. In a survey conducted by The Guardian newspaper, Bridget Jones’s Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century.
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Bridget Jones is a fictional character created by British writer Helen Fielding. Jones first appeared in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary column in The Independent in 1995, which did not carry any byline. Thus, it seemed to be an actual personal diary chronicling the life of Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life, love, and relationships with the help of a surrogate "urban family" of friends in the 1990s. The column was, in fact, a lampoon of women's obsession with love, marriage and romance as well as women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan and wider social trends in Britain at the time. Fielding published the novelisation of the column in 1996, followed by a sequel in 1999 called Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.
Pride and Prejudice is a six-episode 1995 British television drama, adapted by Andrew Davies from Jane Austen's 1813 novel of the same name. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth starred as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy respectively. Produced by Sue Birtwistle and directed by Simon Langton, the serial was a BBC production with additional funding from the American A&E Network. BBC1 originally broadcast the 55-minute episodes from 24 September to 29 October 1995. The A&E Network aired the series in double episodes on three consecutive nights beginning 14 January 1996.
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↑ Hale, Ellen (12 April 2001). "Zellweger's Bridget is 'bang on' to Brits, if a bit posh". USA Today. Tysons Corner, Virginia. Retrieved 15 November 2015. Zellweger's accent was a point of great discussion among those attending on opening night, many of whom admitted to trying to find flaws in her performance. Most agreed that at times her accent was too upper-class for her background.
↑ Graham, Bob (1 April 2001). "Renee Zellweger's Identity Switch / Texas actress managed to perfect an English accent for 'Bridget Jones'". SFGate. Retrieved 15 November 2015. Zellweger brought the accent off, [Hugh] Grant now says, but 'there was a phase at the beginning when she was a little bit like Princess Margaret... But even the most brutal British journalists, who are kind of snooty, have seen screenings in London and have had to eat humble pie. She's impeccable.'
↑ Janine Dallas Steffan (17 April 2000). "Seen, Heard, Said". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
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