THERE ARE only a few fictional characters who have earned more than three outings on the big screen in the titular role. Mostly they are superheroes (Spider-Man, Superman) or ruthlessly talented spies (James Bond, Jason Bourne). What they are not, on the whole, is clumsy, heavy-drinking, unlucky-in-love women with a chronic case of “verbal diarrhoea”. That is what makes Bridget Jones so unusual. On February 13th she returns to cinemas and streaming services in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”, the fourth film in her franchise.
She may never be on time or look quite as she would like to, but Bridget is a reliable box-office draw—even a quarter of a century after her first appearance. “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001) grossed almost $600m in today’s money; the film franchise, including sequels released in 2004 and 2016, has brought in $1.3bn. In 2020 British women named Bridget the most inspirational movie heroine—ahead of Erin Brockovich (a paralegal who, in real life, brought a corporate goliath to heel for contaminating groundwater) and Hermione Granger (Harry Potter’s brainy friend).
Bridget’s influence on the page is just as significant. Helen Fielding’s novel of 1996 has sold more than 15m copies in 40 languages, making it more popular than Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and almost as widely read as Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (which inspired Ms Fielding’s story). “Bridget Jones’s Diary” still sells thousands of copies every year and is credited with launching an entire subgenre of romance literature dubbed “chick lit”: light-hearted stories about the quotidian lives of women, in particular their erotic endeavours and professional goofs.
So what is it about Bridget? Her appeal lies in her familiar haplessness. She strives for perfection, but invariably falls short. She wants to be impressive at work, but is prone to blunders. Her attempts to cook result in congealed monstrosities and burnt spaghetti. (Many of the culinary and professional misadventures are drawn directly from Ms Fielding’s own life.) Bridget “fails”, said Renée Zellweger, who plays her, “at pretending to be what she’s not”.
Her joie de vivre was not only refreshing in the late 1990s—when, as Ms Fielding has observed, single women in their 30s were still likened to Miss Havisham, the lonely, bitter spinster in “Great Expectations”—but remains so today. Bridget revealed a demand for flawed female characters: without her, there would surely be no Hannah Horvath in “Girls” or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag”.
Today Bridget has won Gen Z fans because she offers a joyous contrast with “Instagram culture”, Hugh Grant, one of the franchise’s stars, has argued. Forty percent of Gen Z girls say they feel pressure to be perfect, as they are bombarded with idealised images on social media. Bridget shows that gaffes are an amusing, everyday part of life. On TikTok, a scene in which Bridget accidentally dyes a soup blue has scores of comments, such as: “Me when I cook anything at all.”
Another reason for Bridget’s longevity is Ms Fielding’s comic talents. (She has co-written each of the four films.) She has a talent for shrewd observations and delightfully crude jokes. For a film that is largely about bereavement—Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), Bridget’s husband, was killed on a humanitarian mission—“Mad About the Boy” is also uproariously funny. A scene in which Bridget bumps into her son’s teacher at the pharmacy as she bulk-buys condoms is exquisitely cringeworthy.
Ultimately the Bridget Jones franchise delights because it is a winning combination of reality and fantasy. Bridget faces romantic disappointments, which send her reaching for ice cream or a bottle of Chardonnay, but she also achieves true happiness. Across the four films, five attractive men—one of them some 20 years her junior—profess their adoration of her. Whenever Bridget falls over (which she does, a lot), she finds a way to pick herself up, dust herself off, have a laugh and seek her happy ending. ■
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