Surprisingly worth watching

Rating: 7/10 (18 May 2003)

From the hype surrounding its release, I expected very little of BJD. I'm not generally a fan of mainstream films, especially romantic comedies; I'm not even going to mention the term "chick flick" (oops!) as I find it (the term & most of the movies described as such) utterly offensive.

Anyhoo, a friend got this out on DVD and I found it fairly consistently amusing. It wasn't offensively soppy, the characters, while still pretty stereotypical if you are used to more realistic, non-mainstream cinema, were at least slightly less commonly used stereotypes and there were a fair few laughs to be had for someone who expects at least a modicum of wit and intelligence from a comedy script.
I can't, in general, stand Mr Grant, and Colin Firth has been so typecast of late as a terribly "nice" fellow without much substance; Firth played true to type - I too found myself wishing Bridget would tell him to p*** off, she was so much better than him despite her human frailties - but Hugh Grant was surprisingly not bad. I find him much more believable as an a***hole than his usual nice guy characters.
To sum up, you'll probably love it if you're a mainstream romantic comedy fan and you might even like it if you're not. 7/10