Bridget Jones's Diary
dir. Sharon Maguire
Miramax Films

"Bridget Jones's Diary" has been reinvented for the screen as a love letter to "Pride and Predjudice" — the book and the BBC mini-series — starring Renée Zellweger as Bridget (she of the chain-smoking, compulsive eating, chronic insecurity, ticking biological clock and daily cellulite-scrubbing regimen).

It's a hybrid sprung from a literary allusion and Bridget's avowed Mr. Darcy fetish. Fielding gave a wink and a nod to Jane Austen when she named Bridget's aloof crush "Mark Darcy." The movie goes one step further: Mark Darcy is Mr. Darcy of BBC fame, aka Colin Firth.

If you are familiar with all of the above, be prepared to accept some serious plot swapping. Don't worry; it makes for a funny, surprisingly tender and classy romantic comedy. Even if you don't know Mr. Wickham from a sticky wicket, the storyline — involving two people separated by wrong first impressions and a scoundrel lover — is classic, and the Austen connection elevates Bridget's motives from neuroses and desperation to the quest for her one true love (i.e., one that coexists peacefully with dimpled thighs).

Director Sharon Maguire, the real-life inspiration for Bridget's pal Shazza, pulls it off with help from "Bridget" creator Helen Fielding and writer Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill). They steal bits from Austen, the published diary and the character's early days in Daily Telegraph column.

The story shows a year in Bridget's life, starting with the fateful Turkey Curry Buffet where she meets Darcy, an eligible bachelor disguised in a dorky sweater. Her misadventures include a fling with her boss, Daniel Cleaver (a great shag and unrepentant cad played by Hugh Grant), and enough public embarrassment and silly encounters with Darcy to, well, fill a book. Highlights include a cameo by Salman Rushdie and a (completely unrelated) pair of control-top knickers.

Bridget still struggles against fuckwittage, Smug Marrieds and family crises — conflicts familiar to the diary's readers — but some cattier points of the original book have been softened in the name of romance.

There was room to make a somewhat darker farce out of Diary, and from her performance here, there's no doubt that Zellweger had it in her. The recent Golden Globe winner again shows her gift for giving distinction to characters who seem born to be pitied or dismissed. She did it for a single mom in Jerry Maguire, a soap opera fan from Kansas in Nurse Betty and now a lonely-heart working girl. She's a far better comedic match for Grant than Four Weddings's Andie MacDowell or Notting Hill's Julia Roberts. She works with the filmmakers to package Bridget as an Austen heroine for our times, and it's a v.g. trick.

— Megan Christensen (mmc3e4 at mizzou dot edu)