Butt News #22: Bridget Jones's Diary

I Thought You Said She Was Fat

[Hello to all of my new Butt News subscribers! Thank you so much for being here! I guess I can’t say Darren Aronofsky never did anything for me, because my review of The Whale brought so many of you here! Welcome!

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As always, if you have suggestions for future movies, put them in the comments HERE.

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Fourthly, we added a second night to my show Every Castle, Ranked at the Neptune in Seattle and there are still tickets available! April 6 and 13!]

I’ve been trying to remember why I never watched Bridget Jones’s Diary—probably because when it came out I was 19 and chunky and angry and really invested in not being the kind of girl who made diets and boyfriends her personality and also I was deep in my Mike’s Hard Comedy era at that point and too busy going in with my best friend on a bootleg VHS of Heat Vision and Jack on eBay to care about the tragedy of some beautiful person not being married by the unrelatable age of 32. Plus, when you’re genuinely weird and frumpy, hot girls being “quirky” is a microaggression! Coupled with the “Renee Zellweger is/isn’t fat” discourse (more on that, obviously), I just assumed Bridget Jones was vapid trash until this very day!!! But it’s not! I enjoyed it!

Bridget Jones’s Diary was chosen by Butt News readers via an Instagram poll (scientific) and I wonder if you all assumed I would hate Bridget Jones’s Diary because it was co-written by Richard Curtis, who also wrote and directed Love, Actually, which I accidentally became famous for hating (please buy my book). But I don’t really HATE Love, Actually, actually! I think it’s gimmicky and shallow and its gender politics are bad, but that doesn’t mean that Richard Curtis’s dialogue isn’t SNAPPY! It snaps. It’s giving snap.

I should also mention that Bridget Jones’s Diary is adapted from a book written by Helen Fielding, which I have not read but is no doubt also snappy as hell! Let me not credit a man for a woman’s jokes! And then I suppose we should also credit Jane Austen, who invented the idea of one man being hot and rich and mean but secretly nice and another man being hot and broke and nice but secretly mean and a woman having an annoying mother. Slay, girlboss. It’s giving slaymother.

We open on New Year’s Day in Bridget Jones’s 32^nd year of being single. She is forced to go to her mother’s annual “turkey curry buffet,” which she mentions VERY casually as though this is a type of party with which we are all familiar. England is always doing a nu thang for dinner, innit??? England doesn’t give a crap about which food words go together! This jubilee, pop down the village for me nan’s traditional Scallop Bolognese Chocolate Fountain! (And YES, I’ve heard of turkey mole as a way to use up leftover turkey, but turkey is a New World bird!!! That tracks!)

Every year (EVERY year!?!?!?!) at turkey curry buffet Bridget’s mother tries to fix her up with “some bushy-haired bore,” or it could be “boor,” no way of knowing without FOIA-ing the script. This year the bore/boor is Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, only six years after playing thee definitive Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC Pride and Prejudice, no other Mr. Darcies accepted, sorry!¹), a rich human rights attorney recently divorced from his Japanese wife. “Very cruel race,” says Bridget’s mother, shortly followed by, “You’ll never get a boyfriend if you look like you’ve wandered out of Auschwitz!”

Here’s another option for all of that dialogue: nothing?

Bridget changes out of her perfectly fine normal clothes into an outfit of her mom’s—a red floral matching skirt/vest suit set, which probably read as horrific in 2001 but at this point looks like your average Gen-Zer’s vintage haul because fashion has simultaneously expanded and contracted to form a living block universe of every decade at once, which I like! Cute! There were so many more fashion rules in 2001! Remember how we weren’t allowed to wear gold and silver at the same time? Dark!

That’s Uncle Jeffrey in the rear.

Bridget circulates through the party and many things occur: 1) Bridget’s “Uncle Jeffrey” sexually palpates her ass but she acts like it’s okay (or, at least, non-actionable) because he’s not her blood uncle but just an old man her parents know. 2) Every person including cats and babies is chain-smoking indoors in a house that COULD NOT POSSIBLY have more drapery. This was only 2001! Can you imagine!? Is that what my childhood was like?? 3) Many old women ask Bridget about her sex life and make fun of her for being a “career girl.” 4) Jim Broadbent is Bridget’s dad! A solid gold cast all the way through!

Bridget’s mummy says they should go check if Mark wants a gherkin (you should ask him to prosecute Uncle Jeffrey while you’re over there!) and as they approach him Bridget is hornily blown away, stopped in her tracks, proper gobsmacked by his flaw-free behind. Which… looks like this:

LOL. The ordinary ass of a guy named Mark if I ever saw one! Based on this man’s two perfectly square trouser ciabattas, Bridget thinks he might be Mister Right, but then he turns around and BLOODY ‘ELL! He is wearing a sweater with a reindeer on it! Which I want to defend, because who cares, but haven’t we established that this is New Year’s Day? Christmas has been over for a week, Mark! Serial killer behavior!

Mum tells Mark that she’s friends with his parents and that Bridget used to run around nude in his home when they were small children. Mark refuses to laugh at any of Bridget’s jokes, so Bridget collapses into a babbling shame spiral, which is funny and accurate when talking to this-era Colin Firth. Renee Zellweger is so good! Why have I wasted all these years feeling neutral about her? Mr. Darcy bails on the convo, and then later Bridget overhears him describe her as a “verbally incontinent spinster.”

Here's one reason why a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice KIND OF doesn’t work—the interesting thing about period pieces is watching people bump up against the boundaries of their time. In Pride and Prejudice Fitz Darcy sucks because he has emotional problems AND because he is STRESSED by the social strictures of Regency England. But we don’t have those anymore! In 2001, Mark Darcy is just being a huge bitch!

Bridget goes home to her apartment and lies on the couch in her jammies smoking and drinking wine and blasting turkey farts and watching Frasier. She has a cute little fireplace and zero voicemails. Sounds like the fucking DREAM to me!

Then she air-drums along to “All By Myself” and, once again, it’s so charming! I love her. Also this reminded me that one time in college-ish when I was MISERABLY, DESPERATELY SINGLE my friend Andrew gifted me the Spanish language version of “All By Myself” (“Sola Otra Vez”) on iTunes, during that weird period after Napster but before streaming when nobody had figured out how music was going to work, and TO THIS DAY the song is un-deletable from my Apple account and auto-downloads and auto-plays and dogs me from laptop to laptop! Expert roast, Andoodoo! Except these days I WISH I could get a little time sola otra vez, i.e. away from my dog.

Bridget makes a major decision, which is that she’s going to lose 20 pounds and quit smoking so that next New Year’s she won’t “end up shitfaced and listening to SAD-FM.” She starts a diary to fix her life (that is actually good advice!) and notes that she currently weighs 136 pounds and smokes 42 cigarettes a day (!!!!!!), and, I’m sorry. Twenty pounds? She needs to weigh 116 to get a boyfriend???? Now that I think about it, in the 90s the prevailing vibe was that girls should aim for around 100. Definitely 120 max. That’s how it felt to me, anyway—the closer to 100 the better. I truly think, and this is not hyperbole, that every woman would benefit from eating disorder treatment! Every single one! We’re fucked!

Back to the movie: the fact that the filmmakers made Renee Zellweger gain 20 pounds for this role (because in the book Bridget is lightly porky) and then we destroyed her in the media for gaining weight is a human rights violation that needs Mark Darcy’s attention. Someone should be in jail for that.

That said, I’m not sure it’s a crime committed by the movie. Of course Renee Zellweger with an extra 20 pounds doesn’t need to be on a diet, but it is true to the character that she would be. We all were! And Bridget Jones’s Diary ends in a place most media of the era didn’t—with Bridget getting fatter and eating 42 mince pies and choosing herself (briefly) and being repeatedly told that she’s valued as is. This is the decade of The Swan and Biggest Loser and Extreme Makeover: Human Body Edition! I can see why women loved this movie! Even if it is maddening to be shown Renee Zellweger’s tiny body and told that it’s fat.

Bridget vows that she’s going to stop obsessing over her boss, Hugh Grant, who I’m embarrassed to say is so hot in this movie that I don’t know who I am anymore. I think the trick to Hugh Grant is that he is WAY HOTTER as a shitty badboy than as a stammering bumbler, but he got typecast as a stammering bumbler! Who asked for that? A crime against women’s underpants!

Bridget says her obsession with Hugh Grant is unrequited because she sang “Without You” at the company Christmas party and did a terrible job and Hugh Grant was DISGUSTED because he knows that that is MY karaoke song and he always takes care of me. He says we’re going to move in together as soon as he gets this shit figured out with his ex! Long story.

Bridget’s nemesis at the publishing house (PEMBERLEY PRESS) is named Perpetua, a.k.a. Lynn from Alan Partridge (I SCREAMED!!!!!), who is always slut-shaming Bridget and ordering her around because she’s bitter that she’s never going to meet Benjamin Netanyahu!

Outside of work, Bridget only knows three people: Moaning Myrtle, Gaius Baltar, and Sophie from Alan Partridge (!!!)². Let me tell you, if you watch a disordered amount of British TV, and then you watch Bridget Jones’s Diary, you will be yelling “IT’S THE SISTER FROM THE THING” at your husband a lot!

Bridget and friends go out to dinner and get wasted, and then Bridge has to slurm into work the next morning hungover in her slutty mini-skirt. SHE LOOKS GREAT. Faster than light, Hugh Grant starts sexually harassing her over e-mail, which was just invented. This may have been the first sext! “You seem to have forgotten your skirt. Is skirt off sick?” God, men are so bad at everything. So then the next day she ESCALATES by coming in wearing a see-through top, which is funny, and he (HER BOSS) e-mails her (ON THE COMPANY E-MAIL) “love your tits in that top”!! Sir, you’re fired! Unrelated, my e-mail address is [REDACTED]@gmail dot com.

Why did they just start flirting today? They’ve worked together long enough for her to be “obsessed” with him, and she has consistently been this kind of a drunken slutty basketcase, and he is this kind of perv to his core, clearly, so why zero to 69 million all of a sudden????

Bridget shaves and waxes off all of her body hair and puts on her largest control top panties to prep for hanging out with Hugh at their big book launch. She practices how to be interesting with her friends at dinner beforehand—Gaius advises her to “circulate, oozing intelligence,” and also to “leverage your position as president of New Caprica to have sex with colonists.”

Then some old man goes, “Excuse me,” and Gaius assumes he’s a fan of Gaius’s one-hit wonder pop song from ten years ago and Gaius is like “YES, YES, IT WAS ME,” and is ready to sign an autograph and the old guy is like, “No, your chair is on my wife’s coat.” A classic Samantha Irby “Are you familiar with my work?” moment!!!

Bridget gets to the book party (remember when companies had money?), which is celebrating the release of their big new man-novel Kafka’s Motorbike (LOL, perfect!), and Salman Rushdie is there, but more importantly MOTHERFUCKING MISTER BINGLEY IS THERE IN A NON-SPEAKING ROLE.

And, of course, Mark Darcy is there for no reason. How many people are there in London? Seven? He introduces Bridget to the villainous Natasha, his friend/fellow lawyer/Caroline-Bingley-I-guess, who clearly has her eyes on Mark FUCK-WISE.

Bridget doesn’t know what to say to Salman Rushdie so she asks him where the toilets are. Then, later, Hugh Grant doesn’t know what to say to Salman Rushdie so he ALSO asks him where the toilets are. A perfect bit!

Bridget has to go on stage and introduce her big boss Mr. Fitzherbert so he can introduce the author of Kafka’s Motorbike, but she panics and can’t remember his name because in her head she always calls him Mr. Tits-Pervert because he always looks at her tits at work. Relatable to any woman. Also, LMAO, the blurb for Kafka’s Motorbike is “The greatest book of our time,” which is SO FUNNY, and then Bridget goes into her death spiral again: “Obviously, except for your books Mr. Rushdie, which are also very good.” I lmao’d again. I did! See what I mean about this movie being good? A movie isn’t always bad just because someone is on a diet and has sex with heterosexual men! Just most of the time!

Mr. Darcy sees Hugh Grant grab Bridget around the girdle, erotically, which is unbelievably inappropriate at a work event as usual. Hugh is like, “You’re looking very sexy, Jones. I think you’re going to have to let me take you out to dinner whether you like it or not,” and they leave together.

They go to a restaurant and have this convo:

Hugh: “How do you know Arsey Darcy?”

Bridget: “I used to run around naked in his paddling pool.”

Hugh: “I bet you did, you dirty bitch.”

I hate to say it, but l o l.

Hugh says he and Darcy were mates at Cambridge and then Hugh was the best man at Darcy’s Japanese wedding, but then later he introduced Darcy to his fiancé and then he trails off suggestively. “And I couldn’t say in all honesty I’ve ever quite forgiven him.” HMM, VERY VAGUE. Ladies, if a hot person ever says anything this vague to you, run! Bridget doesn’t know that rule, though, so she infers that Darcy is a nasty bastard.

Then Hugh invites her back to his place: “totally innocent, no funny business, just full sex.” Hehehehe. They go to his apartment and she puts her BOOT SOLES right on his SOFA MEAT, the ones with which she has been tromping about London’s alleyways and Salman Rushdie’s toilets! Disgusting! Those have Jack the Ripper crud all over them! She deserves to have her feelings hurt!

Hugh discovers her “absolutely enormous panties” and says “hello, mummy.” Reader. Why do I like this?

Bridget gets down to 131 pounds because she is fucking Hugh so much and has “replaced food with sex,” which is an eating disorder, sorry! She answers the phone, “Bridget Jones, wanton sex goddess,” but it’s her mum calling from the mall where she’s doing a demo of something called the “Wise Crack Egg Peeler,” which is a tube for jerking off eggs, but she just couldn’t wait to call because she needs to tell Bridget that she feels like she’s wasted her life and so she’s leaving Jim Broadbent for a man called Julian from the home shopping channel who wants mum to be his on-air assistant and jerk off his eggs every night, which is A LOT for an unscheduled phone call! Bridget’s like, sure, okay!

Bridget goes to visit Jim Broadbent who tells her that mummy is taking Julian as her date to Uncle Jeffrey’s Tarts and Vicars party. So Bridget says that HE should go to the party alone and flirt with other women to drive mum MAD! I’m sorry, your parents are getting divorced after a 50-year marriage and THAT’S your advice?!?!?!??! Why aren’t you crying?

She also tells her dad that she has a boyfriend now “and he’s perfect.” Wow, rub it in much? This guy’s wife just left him! You gonna send him a .wav of “Sola otra vez” too??

Hugh agrees to come to Tarts and Vicars to protect her from Uncle Jeffrey. They drive out to the country in his fancy convertible. Then the lady who David Brent went on a blind date with and asked him if they could please not talk about her dead mother’s breasts is the receptionist at their country hotel (THIS IS MY DISEASE) and [airhorn] Darcy and Natasha are there too.

Hugh and Bridget go boating and Hugh is WASTED. He does a nasty limerick and then falls in the lake and then they have NASTY sex! Bridget asks Hugh if he loves her and he says, “Shut up or I’ll do it again,” meaning their spooOoooOOOoOoOky sex act. (He showed her his limerick, now it’s time for his rim-a-lick! Wow, sorry! I don’t stand by that one at all!)

But then in the morning he bails! He says a meeting has come up and he has to go back to London and miss Tarts and Vicars. Bridget (and this is why I like this character!) doesn’t just say okay, she’s all suspicious and sleuths it out like YOU HAVE A MEETING ON A SUNDAY? And he’s like no it’s early tomorrow morning but I have to PREPARE and she’s like HMMMMMM OK BUDDY but you can tell she’s not convinced. She asks if he can just pop into Tarts and Vicars for a minute to encase Uncle Jeffrey’s hands in cement but he says NO and is a Hugh Jdick about it.

Hugh gets pissed and YELLS at her that the Americans are flying in because they’re thinking of shutting the UK office down and SHE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND BECAUSE SHE JUST FANNIES AROUND WITH PRESS RELEASES! Wow, I wish she could press and then release the button that turns off your life support, sir!

Bridget shows up at the party dressed as a Playboy bunny but Uncle Jeffrey didn’t tell her that the theme of the Tarts and Vicars party isn’t Tarts and Vicars anymore. It’s just Ugly Regular Clothes Party.

Natasha sees Bridget and says it’s “bizarre what some men find attractive,” and I guess if I have one critique of this movie it’s that girls are actually not this mean to each other? Also, Playboy bunny outfits are the most regular of all the stuff guys are attracted to!

Bridget’s mom introduces her to an old woman in the buffet line and is like, “This is Penny. Jeffrey didn’t get in touch with her either,” meaning that the old lady is dressed like a slut, and the old woman is like, “What?” and once again I must give this the GOOD BIT AWARD!

Mark Darcy tells Bridget that Hugh Grant isn’t good enough for her and she says, “I’m sure he’d say the same thing about you given your past behavior” and Darcy is like I’M SORRY HWHAHT????? and Bridget leaves without investigating further.

She takes the train back to London STILL IN HER BUNNY OUTFIT (why???????????) and goes straight to Hugh Grant’s apartment to verify that he is indeed prepping for his big American meeting. It seems convincing (he has papers in piles!) so he tells her to go home and change and come back in an hour. But then there’s a mysterious clunk!

Bridget: “Is there someone here?”

Hugh: “Not unless that Bosnian family’s moved in again!”

He walks her to the door and she says she was being ironic when she said she loved him and he’s like I know ha ha. Everything seems fine, but then on the coat rack Bridget spies a WOMAN’S SPANGLED CARDIGAN! In lavender! The one color it’s illegal for men to wear!

Now Bridget is SURE she heard a Bosnian clunk before! She runs upstairs and lo and behold—there’s a nude American publishing executive in Hugh Grant’s toilet, sitting on the edge of the tub wearing nothing but a big folder! Because yeah, she was there to fuck, but they really do have to prep for this meeting, actually.

Lara from the New York Office, looking at Bridget: “I thought you said she was thin.”

WWWWWHHHHHHAAAATTTT????? Setting aside what a fucked-up thing that is to say, WHY would Hugh Grant have said Bridget was thin? What’s the context in which that would even come up?? “Hey, FYI, I’ve been sleeping with my subordinate, she’s THIN.” Unless maybe Lara wanted to invite Bridget to a party with a really tiny door????

Now Bridget walks home in her bunny suit and, again, where are your clothes. You couldn’t have changed in Uncle Jeffrey’s powder room? Bare minimum throw some sweats over the bustier and cut a hole for the tail!

Back at work the next day, now she has to watch Lara slime her American sex juice all over Hugh’s desk!!!!!! Hugh Grant is in tha dawghouse with Bridget for sure. He takes Bridget aside and tells her, “We’re the same, Bridge, you and me,” meaning that they both want to commit to true love but it has to be extraordinary and he just thinks Lara has better confidence because she’s American and thin. “We’ve become very close.” Bridget’s like, “You’ve only just met her. She flew in yesterday.” And he’s like uuuuhhhhhh I’ve been fucking her forever, dummy! In fact, they’re engaged!

Wait, so who did Lara think Bridget was when she came in the bathroom in the bunny suit??

Bridget eats Tesco muesli out of the box and comes up with a new life plan: “I will not be defeated by a bad man and an American stick insect.³ Instead I choose vodka and Chaka Khan.”

She goes on the exercise bike and throws all away her alcohol and cigarettes and buys books about hating men and looks for a new job in television because television is better than books and she wants to humiliate Hugh’s ass.

Bridget: “I’ve got to leave my current job because I’ve shagged my boss.”

Sweaty Job Interviewer: “At Sit Up Britain no one ever gets sacked for shagging the boss. That’s a matter of principal.”

A! Great! Bit!

When Bridget gives her notice, Hugh tries to not let her quit. She says in front of everyone that if the company is doing so bad then maybe they won’t miss the person who just fannies around with the press releases. In fact, she says she’d rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein’s ass! LYNN LOVES IT.

Now it’s Bridget’s first day of work at Sit Up Britain and, I’m sorry, she’s an ON AIR REPORTER? Okay, sure!

She’s reporting from a firehouse and her boss tells her to put on a miniskirt and slide down the pole but then she goes too soon and she has to climb back up the pole and it’s funny. But then there’s a mishap and the camera points straight up her skirt at her giant fat butt! On live television! The real Butt News!!!

Bridge goes to a dinner party with a bunch of smug married couples and of course Mr. Darcy is also at the dinner party with NATASHA and of course he saw her large dumper on the news. He says he enjoyed her Lewisham fire report but he means he enjoyed her ASS.

Darcy asks what happened with Hugh Grant and she says it didn’t work out and he says “I’m delighted to hear it.” Bridge loses it! She says he goes out of his way to make her feel like an idiot every time he sees her and “I already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway!”

Then Darcy does his big signature Darcy speech, where he tells her that she’s ridiculous and her mother is embarrassing and she’s bad at talking but “in fact perhaps despite appearances I like you… I like you very much. Just as you are.”

Her friends aren’t sure what to do with that and frankly neither am I. In Pride and Prejudice Mr. Darcy has to OPEN HIS WALLET to recover from this backhanded trash! Bridget seems like she only heard the “I like you” part?

Bridget’s boss assigns her a “hard-headed interview” (are we sure that's the phrase?) on the Aghani-Heaney extradition case, so she goes down to the courthouse and runs into Darcy AGAIN. Her producer runs up and says they missed their chance to interview Aghani and Heaney and Bridge is like I’M GONNA BE SACKED! But Mr. Darcy says that it’s not just her—nobody got interviews with Aghani OR Heaney, which he knows because Aghani is HIS CLIENT!⁴ So he sets Bridget up with an exclusive and she kills it. I’m not sure about the ethics of undermining your own legal strategy on a delicate asylum case because you want to fuck a reporter, but okay!

It also happens to be Bridget’s 33rd birthday (138 pounds) so she runs home to cook her own birthday dinner for her friends. Her mom calls and tells her she’s going to dump Julian even though “the sex is still very surprising” and get back together with Jim Broadbent. Then Bridget explodes the food processor and gets gravy on her front just as Mark Darcy shows up uninvited! Oh no! He’s going to think she’s got poopy cum all over her!!!!!! He likes it, though.

I don’t know how the fuck this stalker got her address, but he stays to help her cook. She used blue string instead of kitchen twine so the soup turned blue. Darcy saves the day by making omelettes. Her friends get there and they’re like KABOING over it all!

Omg then they’re actually eating the blue soup???? YOU SHOULDN’T EAT THE BLUE SOUP I DON’T THINK. And Gaius says, “To Bridget, who cannot cook, but who we love, just as she is.”

Then the doorbell buzzes again and you know who it is!!!! Hugh Grant with the neg right off the bat: “I thought you might be on your own.” On her BIRTHDAY! Excuse me, sir, this woman has THREE friends!

Hugh says he can’t stop thinking about Bridget, and he only freaked out before because things were moving too fast: “I’m a terrible disaster with a posh voice and a bad character. You’re the only one who can save me.” Fucking sick!!!

Bridget leans in to kiss him instead of projectile vomiting blue soup in his face, which would be the appropriate response, and then Darcy walks in and sees them! He’s like ALL RIGHT, LET’S TAKE THIS OUTSIDE.

Darcy: “I should have done this years ago.” [PUNCHES]

In this moment of great distress for his best friend, Gaius runs across the street into a restaurant and is like “FIGHT!!!! A real fight!” and gets all the waitstaff to run outside and watch—best joke in the movie?

Hugh and Mark beat the shit out of each other all up and down the lane. The fight moves into the restaurant just when they’re bringing out a giant birthday cake shaped like the Parthenon, but then they do NOT crash into the giant cake and I’m wondering why that decision was made? On the day was Hugh Grant like, I’m sorry, it’s in my contract that I cannot destroy anything THIS YUMMY!

Hugh tackles Darcy and they fly out through the front window of the restaurant. You owe that restaurant a million dollars!

Then Hugh Grant calls Darcy a wanker one last time so Darcy knocks him out.

Bridget tells Darcy, “You’re just as bad as the rest of them” and he leaves.

Then Hugh wakes up and is like, “Let’s go back upstairs. Come on. We belong together, Jones. Me, you.”

Bridget: “Right.”

Hugh: “If I can’t make it with you, I can’t make it with anyone.”

Bridget: “That’s not a good enough offer for me. I’m not willing to gamble my whole life on someone who’s, well, not quite sure. It’s like you said. I’m still looking for something more extraordinary than that.”

Look at the spine! We love her!!! Stay single, babe!

It’s Christmas again now and Bridget is 140 pounds. She and her dad are watching home shopping except now mum looks like a hostage. Then she’s at the door! And she wants to get back together with dad for sure! “Close up, he was almost purple. You were such a lovely normal color. He had a filthy temper.”

Dad: “I don’t know, Pam. I just don’t know now. It’s been very hard.”

Mum: “Oh, Colin.”

Dad: “I’m joking, you daft cow! Pam, I just don’t work without you!”

Good one, Colin.

I feel like people’s dads shouldn’t be called Colin.

Mom tells Bridget to get dressed for The Darcys’ ruby wedding party, and I’m having trouble telling what time it is. I thought Bridget was about to go to bed! But she agrees to go to the party, and then mom drops some incredible gossip about Mark Darcy’s ex-wife: “She ran off with his best friend from Cambridge, best man at his wedding.”

I mean, duh, but Bridget is like WOWWOWOWOWWOW HANG ON BITCH.

She finds Darcy in the party and Natasha is there being terrible, of course. Bridget explains that Hugh Grant told her the wrong thing about the wife swapping and she knows now that it was Darcy’s wife and Darcy’s broken heart! She asks him to pop out of the party for a moment so they go into the coat area.

Bridget: “You once said that you liked me just as I am and I just want to say likewise.”

She says he’s haughty and he always says the wrong thing and he should rethink the length of his sideburns and his mom buys him ugly clothes but he’s a nice man and she likes him and if he wanted to pop by sometime that might be nice.

Then for some reason he says “CRIKEY” and has to run back into the party to toast his old parents. Darcy’s dad announces (in his anniversary toast to his own marriage??) that Mark has just been hired to be a senior partner at a firm in New York and he’s moving RIGHT NOW and Natasha is going with him and also the dad is like I HOPE HE MARRIES NATASHA and the string quartet is all HERE COMES THE BRIDE!

Like FUCK, you guys! Did you plan that ahead of time, you weirdos??? Are Mark and Natasha even dating!?

Bridget jumps up and does one of her signature speeches: “No! No! It’s just that it’s such a terrible pity for England to lose such a great legal brain. For the people of England like me and you to lose one of our top people. Just top person, really.”

Darcy: STARE.

And now she’s on the train back to London in a weird party outfit again. She was about to go to BED at her parents house! What time is it?? Now she’s on a TRAIN?

Darcy flies to New York AS HE SHOULD because under no circumstances should you give up an opportunity like this for a woman you barely know!

Bridget (140 pounds) changes the name of her diary to “Diary of Bridget Jones, Spinster and Lunatic” and eats Branston out of the jar, which the internet is telling me is some sort of pickle chutney?

Bridget’s friends come over to cheer her up and drag her on a holiday to Paris. they’re about to get in the clown car but then THERE’S DARCY. He says he came back from New York because he realized he forgot something, which was to kiss her goodbye with his tongue! Darcy: “Mmmmmmmm—is that Branston?”

Bridget tells her friends she’s not going to Paris because she has to go BANG DARCY instead. They love it. Then she goes into her room to look for “genuinely tiny knickers,” but when she comes out Darcy is gone! Because he READ HER DIARY and it says a bunch of mean stuff about him such as that he looks like he has a gherkin stuck up his bum!

Bridget runs outside in her tiny knickers and running shoes and runs through the streets of Londontown in the snow with no pants whatsoever (in the American sense). She finally finds Darcy coming out of a shop and says she’s sorry but he’s like, “I was just buying you a new one. Time to make a new start, perhaps.” [holds up diary]

I mean, you couldn’t have hollered? “Hey, I’m going to step out for a sec?”

Then they kiss in the snow. It kind of feels like they don’t know how to kiss?

Bridget: “Nice boys don’t kiss like that.”

Darcy: “Oh yes they fucking do.”

I don’t know what that means.

I might watch the sequels!

1. Wikipedia says that “Andrew Davies, screenwriter of the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, collaborated on the screenplays for the 2001 and 2004 Bridget Jones films and… The self-referential in-joke between the projects convinced Colin Firth to accept the role of Mark Darcy, as it gave him an opportunity to ridicule and liberate himself from his Pride and Prejudice character.” Not sure if that worked how you wanted it to, bud! Seems like you are twice as much Mr. Darcy as any other living man! Glad to have you anyway!

2. I know it’s a tedious gimmick to constantly point out which other movies and shows you recognize an actor from, and this reference is particularly tortured because Sophie is a VERY small part (but she’s so funny though!!), however I’m just not sure if I can stop. Recognizing British people is an addiction. I’m sick and I hope I never get well!

3. And no, of course we don’t condone body shaming of any kind in this house!

4. I am 99% positive that aside from Salman Rushdie and the not-pictured Japanese ex-wife, Kurdish freedom fighter Kafir Aghani is the one and only not-white person in this entire movie, including extras, and he has about half a line! The past certainly never fails to be itself!