Fantasy Numero Uno.

Rating: 6/10 (6 March 2015)

It's an amusing romantic comedy with Renée Zellweger is a plumpish woman on and after her thirty-second birthday. She's single and nothing much is going on. She seems cheerful enough about it all but she decides to begin life anew, starting a diary and making resolutions such as losing fourteen pounds and cutting down on the drinking and smoking.
Zellweger works in a London publishing house and begins to wear short skirts and rather vulgar see-through blouses to the office. Soon enough she's flirting with her boss, the ever sly Hugh Jackman, and soon after than they're in the sack together. She begins to get a bit mushy and asks him if he loves her. For that, he buggers her for the second time.
Well -- does he love her? Is he willing to "commit"? (That's code for "willing to get married.") Evidently not, because she pays him an unexpected visit one day and finds a luscious babe naked in his bath room. The babe eyes Zellweger with a smirk and remarks, "I thought you said she was THIN." Ouch.
Meanwhile, always hovering around the background, is the successful but stuffy and decidedly unchic Colin Firth. Zellweger has loathed him at first sight. He never smiles or flirt or jokes around like the roguish Jackman. Not much fun, you know. But one day he takes her aside and tells her grimly that he "likes her" just the way she is. Coming from him, that's a Niagara Falls of a confession. In the meantime, though, Jackman has abandoned all his girl friends and tells Zellweger she can give him rebirth. That is, he's now willing to get married and so, it develops, is Firth.
At a dinner one night at Zellweger's flat, Jackman and Firth run into one another and have a fist fight over her. Now this has got to be female fantasy Number One -- two men fighting over you, a plain girl with not much going for her but brains and zest. And they're both successful and have other women salivating over them. Wow. I won't claim it began with Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" because I'm sure the theme goes back in history through the Greek masques, and is lost finally in the mists of antiquity. (For men's fantasy Number One, viz., The Conquering Hero. Start with "Rocky." Go back to "The Iliad.") Much of the wit lies in the writing itself, full of irony and vulgarity. There are a few slapstick scenes -- Bridget trying to cook -- that hark back to "I Love Lucy" and Laurel and Hardy. They're still funny and the absurd characters are well defined.
Zellweger is a decent actress and though hefty she has an engaging blue eyes and a smile that could brighten a room. Jackman is his usual on-screen self, stuttering slightly, a little embarrassed at times. Firth is unpleasant and stiff but Zellweger has juice enough for both of them and she'll turn him into a paragon of élan before you know it.