Brid­get Jones’s Baby

It’s not easy being a sin­gle mid­dle-aged woman in this day and age (but, please, don’t take my word for it). Social expec­ta­tion dic­tates you should be hap­py and healthy, prefer­ably still career dri­ven, but you’d bet­ter bloody well hur­ry up before your win­dow of fer­til­i­ty slams shut. Broad­er roman­tic come­dies adhere to this con­ser­v­a­tive world­view by cast­ing old­er and/​or unmar­ried female pro­tag­o­nists as sad, baby-crazed spin­sters, often hope­less­ly out of touch and worth­less in com­par­i­son to their younger, perki­er counterparts.

What a joy it is, then, to have Brid­get Jones back in our lives. A woman who makes no secret (albeit strict­ly in diary form) of the fact she wants many of the same things as her peers, but who cru­cial­ly isn’t dri­ven to the verge of a ner­vous break­down in pur­suit of the kind of super­fi­cial hap­pi­ness that’s aggres­sive­ly mar­ket­ed to women in glossy lifestyle mag­a­zines and, increas­ing­ly, on social media. She’s neu­rot­ic, painful­ly self-con­scious and cer­tain­ly no role mod­el, but that’s pre­cise­ly what makes her so relat­able and so rel­e­vant in 2016.

By and large main­stream media con­tin­ues to per­pet­u­ate the lie that women do not and should not age grace­ful­ly, that in order to stave off the inevitable you must keep to a strict rou­tine of detox­ing, spin class­es, plas­tic surgery and as much sex as your month­ly data plan will allow. The mes­sage of this bril­liant sec­ond sequel to direc­tor Sharon Maguire’s 2001 adap­ta­tion of Helen Fielding’s nov­el is sim­ple: bol­locks to all that. Life’s too short. Not that Brid­get Jones’s Baby in any rush to tie up the loose ends from 2004’s The Edge of Rea­son. Where would be the fun in that?

At 43, Brid­get is doing rather well for her­self thank you very much. She’s got a great job, has final­ly reached her ide­al weight and her love life is show­ing signs of recov­ery fol­low­ing a peri­od of roman­tic reces­sion. Her preg­nan­cy, which comes about as a result of her being spon­ta­neous and, yes, even a lit­tle care­less if not total­ly irre­spon­si­ble, is unex­pect­ed but not unwel­come. Yet ​“geri­atric mum” isn’t quite the look she was going for, and hav­ing two men vying for her atten­tion is less excit­ing and a lot more exhaust­ing than it sounds. Still, with Mr Dar­cy (Col­in Firth) back on the scene and dash­ing Amer­i­can bil­lion­aire Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey) pulling out all the stops to prove that he and Brid­get are a per­fect match (97 per cent com­pat­i­ble to be pre­cise) things could be a lot worse.

It’s not a spoil­er to say that every­thing works out hunky dory in the end. What is reveal­ing, though, is the way Brid­get tack­les this lat­est per­son­al dilem­ma. You might expect her to have done a lot of grow­ing up in the 12 years she’s been off our screens, but more than any­thing this film reminds us how lit­tle peo­ple actu­al­ly change. And in Brid­get Jones’ case that’s cause for cel­e­bra­tion, because here is a char­ac­ter so accept­ing of her flaws, so com­fort­able in her own skin and so con­sis­tent in her actions that you can’t help but root for her at every turn. Even when she gets it embar­rass­ing­ly wrong – through all the rash deci­sions and ago­nis­ing­ly fun­ny foot-in-mouth moments – she makes no excus­es for being Bridget.

This film won’t change your life. It’s cosi­ly con­ven­tion­al and not exact­ly rad­i­cal in the way it chal­lenges cer­tain stereo­types of lat­er-life sin­gle­dom and wom­an­hood. The man­ner in which it rais­es a polite mid­dle fin­ger to mod­ern con­trivances like algo­rithms and hip­sters feels quaint even by the stan­dards set by the pre­vi­ous films. But it is agree­ably opti­mistic, faith­ful to the char­ac­ters (if not Fielding’s third nov­el) and very fun­ny. Above all, it says that gen­uine human con­nec­tion only comes through being open, hon­est and not fil­ter­ing your­self accord­ing to some­one else’s playbook.