Bridget Jones' Diary

What do you say about a romantic comedy that name-drops F.R. Leavis and hauls in Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer for cameos? You'd say it would appeal to English majors, of course. But even for those who wouldn't recognize one of England's most famous literary critics or two of the major novelists of our time, the presence of these men would still portend a romantic comedy in which words, and their artful choice and ordering, are just as seductive as the bodies that utter them.

Such a romantic comedy is "Bridget Jones' Diary," a mostly successful adaptation of Helen Fielding's extremely funny, and similarly named, novel. The original "Diary" relied more on language than plot for its humor, and the film embraces the clichés of the genre even more passionately than the book did. However, those tender words whispered in the ears of the audience are by turns so piquant, sarcastic and charmingly incoherent than you may not care.

As a matter of fact, one could say that Fielding's novel relied entirely on language for its appeal, since she stole her plot from Jane Austen. This plot has been shorn of inessential scenes for its transition to the screen, but it retains a familiar outline. Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger), a thirtysomething publishing publicist with no mate and few hopes of finding one, meets handsome, rich, eligible Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) at a party. (English majors: Sound familiar?) Though she longs desperately for some kind of man, Bridget manages to work up a complete disgust for Darcy. Seeking alternatives, she hooks up with her boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who's handsome and charming and completely suspicious. Suspicion becomes reality, and for the rest of the film Bridget spends her time finding ways not to hook up with Darcy, at least up until the very end, when what you think will happen ends up happening.

Not a particularly groundbreaking story, and it didn't impress too much when it was written down, either. Director Sharon Maguire and screen adapters Fielding, Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis don't do the plot any favors by adding familiar romantic comedy elements which weren't in the book. Extremely famous songs, like "I'm Every Woman," "Respect," "All By Myself," mirror the feelings of the protagonist in a nauseatingly literal way. Camera placement and lighting treat Darcy less as a man and more as a Greek god. Overlong embraces, during which we are all supposed to sit back and brim with satisfaction, are in fact just plain boring. And an unbelievably sugary final scene which is not in the book definitely should not have been in the movie either.

But the one great success of this adaptation is that it preserves much of the feel for sarcasm, drollery and internal voice that made the book such a pleasure. Renee Zellweger may seem an unusual choice to play a British woman in a British film, since she is Texan, but she has acquired a reasonable accent and is otherwise superbly equipped to play Bridget. Her verbal flustering (public speaking is an adventure for Bridget) and talentless, defensive use of the accouterments of fashion cannot obscure her inner radiance. She also learned somewhere how to deliver a British insult properly, as when she ranks out Darcy just before they finally - well, you know. Firth and Grant have both trod this territory before, and Grant does particularly well in his re-traversal, reveling in the opportunity to use his considerable charm to evil ends.

Even the most ridiculous devices used to get the words of the diary into the movie (internal voiceovers, billboards, just writing on the screen for no obvious reason) work simply because the words are so funny, and, with Zellweger's performance, seem so true. Bridget utters more banalities than she does in the book, but at all other times her voice is present, and as engaging and charming as you like. The writers have also managed to preserve some of the better dialogue from the book. For example, an e-mail exchange between Bridget and Daniel, in which Daniel complains that her skirt seems to be absent and wonders if it is sick, and Bridget takes issue with his "size-ist" attitude, is almost as funny here as it was when it was written down.

Still, there's no denying that those stock romantic-comedy images and strategies do get a little intrusive. So, back to our original question: what do you say about such a film? If you're a sucker for those old romantic-comedy tricks, and there are a lot of people who gladly surrender to them, "Bridget Jones' Diary" will serve you well. But if you're less susceptible than many, "Bridget Jones' Diary" may well be palatable and even enjoyable, because for the most part the old, tired plot is upstaged by the fresh, fun voices and words that inhabit and serve it.

IF YOU MAKE A GREAT JOKE AND NO ONE GETS IT, IS IT STILL FUNNY? THE CONTINUING INQUIRY

I know about four of you would get the F.R. Leavis reference if you saw this film, because my mom didn't recognize his name, and she knows more about literary critics than most people I know. The real question is why is this joke in the move at all. As my mom noted, the presence of Rushdie and Archer could be explained by "naked opportunism," and Rushdie actually acts natural in his 20-word role, though Archer just stands there not saying anything for some reason. But F.R. Leavis jokes? Does anyone think that dropping the name of one of the creators of the journal Scrutiny is that funny? There were about fifteen critics in the MPAA at this screening, and only two people (one of whom was me) laughed.

The really odd thing is that I read the book, and I don't remember there being any goddamned F.R. Leavis references, and that's the kind of reference you don't forget. (When I left the theater and the woman from Allied asked me what I thought of the flick, my first words to her were"F.R. Leavis, baybee!") [The people from Allied did eventually begin to like me, but it wasn't then.] So, unless I did forget, which as some people on this list know is an entirely conceivable circumstance, we are forced to conclude that Fielding and co. inserted an F.R. Leavis reference, presumably for its amazing commerical potential.

I am sympathetic to the position of the screenwriters here. I have crafted several insanely amusing jokes over the years which are completely incomprehensible to most people, mainly because they rely on minute knowledge of widely disparate fields (such as action films and classical music). In fact, some of these jokes are so incomprehensible that they are completely inaccessible to everyone I know, and I have to assume that they are amusing simply because I think they are. Those jokes are fun to come up with, and even more fun to (attempt to) find an audience for. But I wouldn't put them in a movie that I wanted to make money, either.

So, to answer the title question of this mini-essay, I dunno. But if I had to use money to disseminate a completely incomprehensible joke, and the joke proved widely unsuccessful, I wouldn't think the resulting loss of money was too amusing. I think this will be an adequate interim answer to the question. If anyone has any thoughts about this dilemma, please share them with me and I will gladly retransmit them to our fellow Spam-O-Matickers. After all, if we don't answer questions like this, it's not like F.R. Leavis is going to answer them for us.

Later I talked with another movie reviewer (I dunno who) about why the F.R. Leavis reference was in there. We couldn't figure it out. He was a lot more blasé about the whole thing than I was. I think he may have seen more movies that presume a certain level of erudition on the part of the viewer than I have. Or he may have been less viscerally acquainted with the deplorable state of our educational system than I am.

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