Screwball comedy is still alive in this modern age but needs Lombard, Grant and Stewart...

Rating: 5/10 (29 September 2008)

RENEE ZELLWEGER plays such a klutzy frump of a girl in this British screwball comedy that it's hard to imagine COLIN FIRTH and HUGH GRANT fighting over her. We're told that it's because she so "natural" that she has men buzzing around her. Well, that might be true if Miss Zellweger looked more like Carole Lombard. In fact, one could easily see this as a screwball comedy back in the '30s if Hollywood made the story starring Lombard, Cary Grant (not Colin Firth) and James Stewart (not Hugh Grant). Get my drift? Instead, Miss Zellweger looks more like pudgy Lynn Redgrave of "Georgy Girl," an overweight and rather awkward young woman given to wearing tight clothing and making the most inappropriate remarks at the most crucial moments. She speaks her mind without any regard for the consequences and lands into one troublesome social situation after another because of her quirky attitude.
An inside joke has COLIN FIRTH's character called Mr. Darcy--and indeed, he behaves as that gentleman did in "Pride and Prejudice," at first utterly rejecting Bridget Jones and then making a pass at her which she turns down, only to change her mind before the final reel.
HUGH GRANT has a thankless role as a witless cad but plays it with his usual charm, the sort of role James Stewart might have done had this been made back in Hollywood's Golden Age when screwball comedy was just as mad but a lot less risqué.
But Renee, Colin and Hugh are not Lombard, Grant or Stewart and the film suffers because none of them can make this kind of material seem like anything more than a manipulative romantic comedy about an awkward girl finding her Prince Charming in a Jane Austen kind of way--with all the modern sensibilities destroying most of the charm.
Unless you're a devoted fan of these stars, this one is pretty hard to recommend except as very lightweight entertainment in quirky British style, but Bridget's gaffes are too monumental to be accepted by Darcy.