Bridget Jones's Baby
1 Waffle!

The entire movie feels like an unwelcome relic re-emerging from a different generation. Did someone use the technology from Jurassic Park to clone the Bridget we once knew to give us this pale imitation?

Renee Zellweger is back as Bridget Jones, and she’s still a mess. It’s her 43rd birthday, Bridget still is sad over the breakup she had with Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) almost five years ago, and the lady wonders if she is condemned to life as a spinster.

While away at a big music festival, Bridget meets Jack (Patrick Dempsey). Because he is sexy and charming, let’s just say the two of them hit it off, but, the next morning, Bridget sneaks away.

About a week later, Bridget is the Godmother for a friend’s baby, and runs into Mark. Let’s just say they hit it off, but, the next morning, Bridget sneaks away.

Soon, Bridget discovers she is pregnant, but which guy is the father?

Will one of them try to sneak off?

Bridget Jones’s Baby is a sad attempt to rehash and revive a character who hasn’t been relevant in the 12 years since the last installment. Who has been sitting around hoping we can see more of Bridget’s antics? Was there a petition? Did I miss the protests and marches?

The movie is a series of pratfalls, Three’s Company-style misunderstandings and deceptions, and far too much melodrama combined with predictability and tired clichés.

Writers Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson try to fit in too many little story threads. We don’t need to see Bridget’s struggles at work as she faces a new group of twentysomething hipsters changing her beloved news program. The give and take of her relationship with Mark seems pitiful as we are left to wonder why two people who seem constantly to break up and get back together are going through this again at their age. The opening sequence giving us some information about what happened to Hugh Grant’s character is meaningless and useless. Plus, the last minute frantic race to the hospital during labor has been overdone twenty times over.

Just when you think the Bridget Jones franchise might be finished for good, we get the horrific tease of a sequel. Somebody stop them before it is too late.

Bridget Jones’s Baby is rated R for language, sex references and some nudity.

122 Minutes