Bridget Jones’s Baby: Do I Kinda Love This Movie Based on My Least Favorite Bridget Jones Book?

*Plays "Jump Around" by House of Pain.*

BOLD STATEMENT: Of the three extant (as of Feb. 11, 2025) Bridget Jones movies, 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby is probably my favorite. To whit! It is the film I turned to on November 5, 2024, WHEN I JUST COULD NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE:

Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024

10:08pm: Alcohol units: 2; Election posts: 6; Vape pods: >1 (all day); Mood: steadily numbing

Have finished LGBTQ Nation election coverange shift (all optimistc look-on-bight0side post early in evning seem fraudulent now) and second glass of chardonnay. Shold just go to bed but LOLOL is impossibl.

Wonder if s politicaly irresponsible to just watch Bridget Jones?

11:18pm: Alcohol units: 4; Mins since checked NY Times, Threads, etc: >30; Mood: settling?

Watching Bridget Jones’s Bebe. Good choixe. Have legits LOL severeal times. Haus of Pin credits s brillant! Suverssive! V cheering. Azo, Glassonfry! Fun! Wellys, mud, raves, Ed Sheeran! (dos I love Ed sheern may? all doof and cuddly ginger?) Though don’t think I havenough wine tho…

Sincere apologies for invoking hideous specter of election trauma, but my point is: I needed something to distract and delight me in a moment of crisis and despair and that thing was Yellowtail Chardonnay Bridget Jones’s Baby, a delightful movie.

The funny thing about how much I quite like Bridget Jones’s Baby is that it’s based on my least favorite BJ novel. Books pedantry — ugh, hideous unsettling word, like something that gets one put on an FBI database — incoming:

Somewhat confusingly, Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries is actually the most recent of Helen Fielding’s four BJ books. It was published in 2016, around the release of the film and three years after Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, which takes place chronologically after BJ’s Bebe. The novel is based on Fielding’s 2005–2006 revival of her column in the Independent and unlike the other three BJ books, is much more singularly focused on a discreet storyline: Bridget’s pregnancy and confusion about whether Mark Darcy or Daniel Cleaver is the father of her gestating spawn. BJ’s general musings and random foibles are significantly less prominent in this one, and I think at this point we all know how I feel about that. But for any newcomers, or in the (likely) event that I have not quite explained this properly, let’s review:

The key pleasure of the books for me is just being in Bridget’s presence and experiencing the world from her perspective: reading her rattle on about her chaotic morning routine, or give a ridiculous minute-by-minute account of everything she does to avoid doing work as a deadline looms, or attempting to write an absurdly formal RSVP to a party invitation (“It is with great regret that we must announce that so great was Miss Bridget Jones’s distress at not being able to accept the kind invitation of Mr. Mark Darcy that she has offed herself and will therefore, more certainly than ever, now, be unable to accept Mr. Mark Darcy’s kind…”). Any overarching plot is simply beside the point. But, it turns out, the thing I love most about the novels happens to be that which is least adaptable to the SILVER SCREEN. It’s fine. I’ve made my peace with it.

Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries, however, is kind of all plot, which probably makes for a better, more effective film adaptation. With the exception of one major change (more on that later), what we get in Bridget Jones’s Bebe the film is basically what’s in the book. Which I, actually, appreciate! You can’t miss what was never there, right?

More importantly, though, Bridget Jones’s Baby is just fresher and funnier than the previous two movies. My sense is that a lot of that is probably due to Emma Thompson and Paul Feig, both of whom worked on the script at various points in the film’s development. (Which also makes me slightly anxious about the Mad About the Boy movie as neither Thompson nor Feig worked on that script. But we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it…) It’s in no way a radically different take on a Bridget Jones story, but it’s somehow less…schmaltzy.

The opening credits are a prime example of what I think I mean. The film opens with sad BJ sadly alone in her sad apartment sadly listening to that same sad cover of “All by Myself” once again. It’s her 43rd birthday and she’s still single and seemingly all characteristically bummed about it. Except then she’s like, “Fuck this!” and switches the music from “All by Myself” to “Jump Around” by House of Pain and has a grand ol’ time getting drunk by herself. I find this cheeky inversion of the first film’s opening credits completely delightful, and not merely because I had the five-alarm hots for Erik “Everlast” Schrody when I was a teen! It signals that we are about to spend the rest of the movie with a…well, I’ll just say it: with a less annoying Bridget.

And Renée Zellwegger’s performance of the character this time around delivers on this promise. Her Bridget in the first two movies has always struck me as not just awkward and insecure, but pathetic in a way that didn’t do her justice. But in BJ’s Bebe, Zellwegger seems less bogged down in trying to convey BJ’s haplessness and allows the character to be fun and effervescent. Her performance seems to have finally matured into the version of the character I recognize from the cherished, perfect-in-every-way books, a person who is simply more fun to be around.

Ok, so credits out of the way, BJ flashes back to the morning of her bday when she is awoken by a FaceTime (oooh present times technology!) from her mother who randomly suggests she get some frozen sperms and have a baby (foreshadowment!). But BJ is like, “Can’t right now, have to go to a funeral!”

That funeral is that of Daniel Cleaver, because Hugh Grant decided he didn’t want to be in this movie (unlike fucking Wonka, which he did for some reason want to be in; deranged choice). Which brings us to the big-time major change from the book: with Daniel off the table, Fielding et. al. introduce a new character, dating website algorithm billionaire Jack Quant (Patrick McDreamy Dempsey), to fill in as the other dude BJ might be impregnated by. I’m of two minds about all this. I do think it’s wise that rather than just being a faux-Daniel stand-in, Jack is a wholly distinct character. However, where Daniel is all sexily dissolute and roguish, Jack is barfably sweet and attentive and perfect and, I dunno, neutered-seeming? Like, Patrick Dempsey is for sure sexy, but…he seems to be playing a Care Bear rather than an adult human man. I’m not here to be all like “LET MEN BE MEN!” or whatever, but…maybe kinda let straight male characters be recognizable as straight men? I dunno… Plus, the movie does suffer a bit from Hugh Grant charm deficiency.

Anyway, after all her old now-married friends blow her off on her birthday because they all have BABIES now, Bridget’s fun new 30-something friend and co-worker Miranda takes her on a girls weekend to Glastonbury or whatever, where she meets Jack Quant and does sex with him in a tent while Miranda maybe does sex with Ed Sheeran in a giant beach ball? Unclear, but apart from the dumb Jack Quant stuff, this whole sequence…kinda sparks intense joy? I dunno! It’s just fun to watch Bridget having unabashed fun, which she never really got to in the other movies.

The following week, Bridget goes to a christening (MORE BABIES!) and there’s a big all-night after party (Is that normal? Do all christenings have ragers after?) where she and Colin Firth Darcy — who has been married and divorced again since breaking up with BJ — also have sex. But the next morning BJ realizes that Colin Firth remains a world class drag and peaces out of there before he wakes up.

Then, some months later, BJ is like, “I have menopause now!” But Shazzer (remember BJ’s friend Shazzer?) is like, “Maybe you’re pregnant from using biodegradable expired condoms?” And she’s right! That is what Bridget is!

Shenanigans ensue, including: BJ and Miranda trick Jack Quant into coming on their TV show so they can get hair and blood and fingernail samples to test whether he’s the bebe’s puh-pa, but then Bridget just ends up telling both him and Colin Firth what’s up anyway because she doesn’t want Emma Thompson to make a bebe kabab with her amniocentesis skewer. (Emma Thompson plays BJ’s hilarious obstetrician or whatever. She’s a gem!)

Oh god, best not to contemplate implications. Unrelated: must empty trash IMMEDIATELY.

So, BJ and her two brother husbands try to have a civilized ménage-a-preg, but Jack is all falling in love with Bridget and tells Colin Firth that he (Jack) is probably deffo the daddio because he barebacked BJ at Glastonbury, which is a lie. This makes Colin Firth all sad and huffy, so he huffs off in a huff bequeathing Bridget and her unborn progeny to Jack.

But when Jack is like, “Let’s move in together!” BJ’s like, “Hold up hold up, I dunnoo if I like you like that.” Then Jack confesses his lie re: barebacking BJ and she’s like, “Go directly away from me now, I’m really in love with Colin Firth.”

Except when she goes to Colin Firth’s house, his alleged ex-wife is back, so BJ assumes they’re undivorced or whatever and goes home to gestate alone. Then she loses her job due to her new 20-something insane boss being insane, and gets locked out of her house because she’s too pregnant to live.

Luckily, though, Colin Firth randomly shows up to break her into her house, and is like, “No, I’m still divorced and also in love with you, like normal!” But BJ’s like, “Hold that thought, I’m in labor now!”

For some reason neither of them has a car suddenly and all the cabs in London have exploded and Colin Firth’s Pussy Riot-esque clients are having a feminist march in the streets, so BJ and Colin Firth have to run on foot to the hospital (which, if I know anything from watching38 seasons of Call the Midwife is the worst place in London to have a baby anyway). But then Jack Quant magically shows up out of nowhere on a moped, which he promptly also explodes so that he and Colin Firth can carry Bridget’s body to the hospital. (None of these people should be parents!)

At the hospital, BJ births her baby without incident, and Emma Thompson does her genetic testery, and obviously Colin Firth is the sire! (Meanwhile, all BJ’s friends and parents come charging into her hospital room all complaining about the Pussy Riot march, and Colin Firth keeps trying to explain why it’s actually v politically vital for women’s rights etc., but they all just ignore him, which I believe to be a v amusing running joke!)

So then, like a year later or something, BJ and Colin Firth finally get married for real this time, and Jack is, like, the baby’s godfather or something so it’s all a happy ending. Plus, the newspaper says Hugh Grant was found alive in Oompa Loompa land or whatever, which is also good news so he can be in the next one.

Also! There’s this moment I really love at the very end where Jack and Colin Firth and all the wedding guests kinda fuck off and leave Bridget alone with her baby walking in this field. And there’s this really pretty, sweeping Ellie Goulding song playing that’s also weirdly kind of wistful, and a gust of wind blows BJ’s veil away. And knowing what happens between this and the next book/movie, I always think of that gust of wind as, like, the future coming for Bridget, and that very slight suggestion of uncertainty and melancholy really deepens and enriches the film’s seemingly happy ending.

Ugh! I really do love it so much! It’s the best one!