Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)

"_You think you've found the right man, but there's so much wrong with him, and then he finds there's so much wrong with you, and then it all just falls apart._"

It feels like an extension of the first movie more than a prequel. I mean that as in it is very similar, contuing from where we left off and is still pretty funny. Lesson for me here is that overthinking is a bitch.

Picking up from the first outing for the ditzy "Bridget" (Renée Zellweger), she is now six weeks into her doting relationship with human rights lawyer "Mark" (Colin Firth). Thanks also to a bit of skydiving and some pigs, she is finding her broadcasting career blossoming too and with boss "Richard" (Neil Pearson) keen to build her part up, she is annoyingly partnered with smarmy old beau "Daniel" (Hugh Grant) and despatched to do a travelogue on Thailand. He's a charmer is that one, but she knows he cannot be trusted. That's successfully proven when she gets herself caught up in a drug smuggling caper and confined to a 40-to-a-cell women's prison with only one fairly hapless Foreign Office gent telling her how sticky her wicket is! Can she be rescued? Can she get back to her beloved? Of course there's not a jot of jeopardy to any of this, and in the intervening three years since the first film this character has lost much of her charm and punch. In many ways this just mirrors that story only it's not so innovative any more. There's still plenty to poke fun at amidst her sexist and accident-prone environment and Zellweger really does have the character down to an hapless T now, but I just felt I knew what was coming long before it did and the writing this time around defers all to often to the soundtrack. It's amiable enough, but a little tired and predictable.

<em>'Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason'</em> is a totally pointless sequel. There isn't really anything substantial that happens in this, it basically goes in one big circle before finishing how it started; aside from one minute-long detail. Admittedly, it does manage to avoid being bad.

Renée Zellweger remains a plus, as do Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. With that said, this film adds nothing new to their characters, they are just replicas of themselves from the 2001 original. The film (as before) does have a charm to it, which saves it from a lower rating... too generous?