I love Bridget Jones...the original, both the book and the movie. I have seen that movie, oh, THOUSANDS of times. I can pretty much quote it verbatim. Bridget is my hero, and while I was less enamored with the second one (although still funny and pithy, it just took a turn for the crazypants in Thailand), I consider the original a Christmas movie and put it in the rotation in December. I watch it when I am in a funk and need a good laugh. It just always makes me happy.
Which is why I was horrified when I saw the trailer for the new movie, Bridget Jones' Baby. I heard about it and assumed it was a re-titled version of the third book, which admittedly I haven't read yet, called Mad About the Boy. In the BOOK, Bridget is a 51-year old mom to a young boy and poor Mr. Darcy is no more (as in dead, this is not a spoiler), so she is navigating the world of single motherhood AND trying to learn how to date in a digital world. It sounds more hilarious than sad; I just haven't gotten around to it.
Bridget Jones' Baby looks like utter tripe (my apologies if you love tripe). It has NOTHING to do with the book at all: instead Mr. Darcy is her ex and Patrick Dempsey is a new love interest and whoopsy-daisy she messed around with both of them at times amenable to conception WITHOUT PROTECTION and has landed herself pregnant, I'm guessing in her early forties. Maybe late thirties. Hard to tell in movieland.
It sort of fills me with fury. The whole "who's the daddy" thing is so overused, and Bridget looks sort of like an idiot, although one who tearfully views her scan and says something like "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," in a touching moment, but then is also carried, in labor, by both men, because presumably she's so MASSIVE. Ha, ha, Bridget is a fat pregnant lady. Although she looks like she's been dieting and doesn't need her scary stomach-holding in panties popular with grannies the world over, in the scenes before her bump makes an appearance.
Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just bitter, but it seems pregnancy-as-gag is the WORST way they could have led Bridget. She was the champion of singletons in their thirties, she was a straight-shooter and I so would have enjoyed watching her work through the loss of Mr. Darcy, handling motherhood, and discovering the hilarious pitfalls of online dating and social media. Also, to see our quirky, funny heroine as a FIFTY-ONE YEAR OLD would have been nice... LET BRIDGET AGE!
Like I said, it fills me with fury. And I boycott it. And I think I will go buy Mad About the Boy and see what happens when Bridget grows well into middle age and deals with less idiotic problems than a pregnancy that's basically one big joke. I'm sure it will be hilarious, and poignant. I just hope I never see that stupid trailer for the movie again.
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Hey Jess! Long time. How have you been?
ReplyDeletewell, I am with you there. I would not watch that movie for free. It doesn't make sense at all. :/
Hi Parul! Just continuing to exist, you know... :) In that amorphous waiting, which is tough but okay. Eyes on the prize.
DeleteNo, it totally doesn't make sense! Why they veered so far away from the book is beyond my comprehension and so very disappointing. I love that, "I would not watch that movie for free." :)
Ugh! I hadn't seen the trailer yet, so I just Googled it - I made it to the 1:34 mark, and couldn't go any further. This is so discouraging on so many levels - sign me up for the boycott!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it awful? I'm so disappointing that Helen Fielding had anything to do with it. And then to find out that she's publishing it as a book, "Bridget Jones' Baby: The Diaries" to coincide with the movie in October? Horrific. So, exactly how are you going to go back in time and make it so that Bridget and Darcy broke up instead of got married and had a baby? How do you rewrite what happened BEFORE age 51, since after further anger-fueled web research she's supposed to be 43 when she gets pregnant in the movie? SO BIZARRE and upsetting.
DeleteOh, and looks like Hugh Grant wasn't happy with it either -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Movies/2016/08/12/Hugh-Grant-passed-on-Bridget-Joness-Baby-I-didnt-like-the-script/6661471018400/
Hugh Grant has good taste. ;)
DeleteAgreed! :D
DeleteOh, yes, I saw the trailer and thought it looked stupid. I guess people are entitled to their dumb-funny brain candy, hate to be a party pooper about that. However, coming from this particular experience, it seems decidedly cheap. I've also felt that way when Hollywood has bastardized donor conception tales for the sake of comedy. And, along with Carrie Bradshaw, it marks the exit of another single-ladies' idol into motherhood, which makes it seem as if there's no other place to end up. That's a bit alienating for women who can't get there or who make a different choice.
ReplyDeleteOh, absolutely. I have no doubt that it will do great in the theater as brain candy. I totally agree with you on how the donor conception experience has also been turned into gags for the sake of movie madness. It's definitely alienating. What I don't understand is why it wasn't okay to align it with the books -- did they not want to kill off Colin Firth? Is the idea of a 50-something online dating just not Hollywood-compatible? Is making Bridget into a tragic figure who overcomes through humor just not good enough? I have to read the book to really back it, but I am so disappointed at the cheapness of this situation in the movie. Grrr. Thanks for your thoughts!
DeleteThis by the way is the latest Hollywood bastardization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws74Ie4fMc8. Have you seen? Talk about stoking fear and stigma.
DeleteACK! I must have ripped that one right out of my memory because that trailer ALSO played before Bad Moms, and holy hell it made me so angry. I whispered to my friend "The lesson here is that infertility kills" and just couldn't believe a film like that made it this far. Jeezum. Way to sensationalize and dramatize.
DeleteNow this is disappointing to hear. The whole point behind the Bridget Jones books was exactly as you said and Hollywood can't seem to get it. So they go back to a formula that has failed time and again. Not something we should be celebrating.
ReplyDeleteAnd I never thought I would say this, but good for Hugh Grant!
Right? Go Hugh Grant! I'm so disappointed in the rest.
DeleteOh I watched the trailer at a movie theater so there was no escape, but I cringed the whole way through those few minutes. I will avoid it at all cost.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good plan. I totally cringed, too. I just felt so confused, because I knew about the third book and that TOTALLY WASN'T IT. So disappointing.
DeleteI thought the concept looked silly in the previews, too. I just Googled it and it looks like Fielding is credited as screenwriter along with Emma Thompson and one of the co-writers of "Borat." If that tells you anything.
ReplyDeleteSo silly, right? I was really hoping somehow Helen Fielding had nothing to do with it, that it was like how Stephen King doesn't like so many of his movies, the way they were interpreted from the books. No such luck. And Emma Thompson? SO disappointing.
DeleteI could not agree more! I have no interest in this whatsoever & wish they had decided to do something far more interesting with the franchise.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts exactly. It's not interesting at all and a horrid end to what I really related to. I saw an interview where it was said that "Bridget is just so relatable, real women can relate" and I was like, USED TO! How many people relate to getting pregnant at 43 and not knowing who the daddy is and having sort of a competition of sorts to suss it out? Arghhh. Not relatable.
DeleteI'm joining your boycott. Got no time for contrived tripe.
ReplyDeleteSeriously. I hope it tanks.
DeleteI'm not going to see it either BUT this has just reminded me that it has been a very loooooooooooong time (as in, since it came out) since I have seen the first one. And I think I will pop it into the rotation this year, too.
ReplyDeleteOh good! This new nonsense doesn't sour me on the original... It's just such a great movie. Steel Magnolias when you need to cry, Bridget Jones when you need to laugh. :)
DeleteI'm boycotting it for my own reasons...this just seems to be an insensitive movie any way you look at it.
ReplyDeleteIt's just so silly and demeaning to Bridget, who admittedly is a silly character but she didn't seem a complete IDIOT to me. This movie is just terrible. Plus the skinniness irks me. To refuse to put on weight for a character who is SUPPOSED TO BE RELATABLE BECAUSE SHE'S NOT HOLLYWOOD SKINNY should have just not been an option. Argh
DeleteEww, it does sound dreadful, that's a big pass on that. Of course they wouldn't do a movie about a 51 year widow who's a mother, that actually sounds plausible!
ReplyDeleteHa! So true. Oh, Hollywood, you suck sometimes. I did get the third book in the mail yesterday, I figure if I'm going to say it would have made a better movie perhaps I should have read it... :)
DeleteMajor let down! Thanks for the warning that it greatly strays from the books. I was going to rent the first two to research the first and catch up on the second before seeing the third one in the fall. Now I know it will be a huge waste of time. Such a huge disappointment after the first movie.
ReplyDeleteI have fond memories of the original book -- I read it in the dark days following the stillbirth of my daughter, and it was such a welcome tonic, so great to realize that I could actually laugh again! Loved the original movie too. However, I generally find sequels (especially movie sequels)to be disappointing so I've never read any of the followup books or seen the second movie. I did see the trailer for this one. I think I will give it a pass too.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of how I feel, it's a tonic. On the really bad days it made me feel so much better, albeit the movie version. I loved the book, although I haven't returned to it...maybe I should! The movie is something I return to over and over again. The second one was disappointing, and I'm trying to think of something that wasn't already a series that wasn't disappointing in the second run and I'm having a hard time! Yeah, this movie looks terrible.
DeleteHaven't we had enough pregnancy-as-comedy movies? My goodness. I would have loved the movie how you describe the plot of the book. But then again, turning tragedy and struggle into comedy takes actual effort, so...
ReplyDeleteUgggghhhhh! That stuff bugs me too. I read the first Bridget Jones Diary fairly recently, but haven't gotten to the second one or the movies yet. I know. Suuuper behind!
ReplyDelete