Movie Review: Bridget Jones’ Baby (2016)

Plot: Bridget’s focus on single life and her career is interrupted when she finds herself pregnant, but with one hitch … she can only be fifty percent sure of the identity of her baby’s father.

Rating: 8.5/10

I liked every single thing about this movie. I had my reservations. Reboots are mad, sequels are a terrible idea and after 10 years even more so. I was so surprised when Bridget returned exactly as we left her – a bit more mature and world weary, without her beloved Mr. Darcy. She seems okay though – she has her friends, she’s much better at being alone and she’s quite successful. However, a rendezvous with a beautiful stranger at a music festival and a similar one with the love of her life results in a positive pregnancy test at 42 and some very awkward situations. She needs to tell her parents, something that every person on this planet probably dreads the most regardless of their age or circumstances.

If you saw my review of The Edge of Reason on Wednesday, you know that I was very unhappy with it and that it completely lost what Bridget is about. BJB is different – the core of Bridget is the same – her truly amazing thoughts and quips. Patrick Dempsey replaces Daniel as love interest #2. Is he as hilarious and as charismatic as Hugh Grant? No-one can hope to be as I still consider Grant one of the finest actors in romantic comedies. I enjoyed Daniel as a character but still feel that he’s not part of the core team of the Bridget Jones mystery.

Mr. Darcy is back, and even with additional wrinkles he might still be the love of my life too. He’s reserved and serious and I love that about him – terrible to say but his feelings feel so much more valid as a result. My main reason for concern was that I cannot live in a world where Mr. Darcy isn’t with Bridget – she carries the torch for all the rest of us awkward girls. It’s obvious that they belong together and even if Dempsey makes a convincing case there was no doubt in my heart. I did think some of her actions were rotten though – she should have pushed through with telling them that she wasn’t sure who the father is – there are a few crimes that I really think women should pull off and that is solidly one of them.

Anyway, I got off my moral high horse now. BJB is one of my favorite films of 2016 – even my mom was in stitches and I was so sure she’d get on HER high horse because of two sexual partners (THE HORRORS). It is truly hilarious, it is truly Bridget, I cannot recommend it enough and it is certainly better than THE EDGE OF FUCKING REASON.

October 7, 2016October 2, 2016 by Natasha Categories: 2016, Movies, movies, Review, Reviews, RomanceTags: 2016, Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones' baby, Bridget Jones’ diary, Colin Firth, Movies, Patrick Dempsey, Renee Zellweger, Reviews, romantic comedy, sequel 6 Comments

Movie Review: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason(2004)

Plot: After finding love, Bridget Jones questions if she really has everything she’s dreamed of having.

Rating: 4.5/10

I have two things I am really upset about after watching The Edge of Reason: 1) I spend R100 on this DVD – I will never be able to replace that money, no matter how hard I work. It is gone forever. 2) I wasted one hour and forty minutes on this crap, and while I can probably get over the lost hundred rand I cannot forgive that this was one hour and forty minutes of time in a life that is not infinite.

The Edge of Reason is the sequel to the wildly popular and equally awesome original Bridget Jones’ Diary. This is likely the best known case of sequelitis I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Bridget isn’t even herself in this film – they have her essence completely wrong. Her quips are off and her personality is skewed. Mark Darcy isn’t himself – and if Colin fucking Firth cannot save a movie, no one can. Daniel is back, and he is not himself – the Daniel in the first film was more affable rouge than heartless bastard – everyone loves Daniel because he gets to a point that he cares for Bridget, genuinely cares, and would not leave her surrounded by foreign police.

The fucking story – who wrote this? WHO? Was Helen Fielding on the writing panel? I highly doubt it. How did they think it would be okay to somehow make jokes about foreign prisons and drug smuggling and lesbians?OMFL (That is now OH MY FUCKING LIFE). It is awful. The pacing is wrong, the actors are all aware that the fantastic work they did with the first film is being destroyed in front of their eyes and there is nothing they can do about it. Bridget and Mark eve lacked the intensity they had in the first film. I nearly switched this off – I was about half way through and thought I cannot do this to myself. But sometimes I get through things promising myself that I will come and tell you all about it and then I feel so much better. So here I am, and take the advice of your trusted friend here, and don’t watch the Edge of Reason. Watch the first film and definitely the new third installment (review loading tomorrow!), but avoid this piece of shit because you don’t deserve to waste your time like I did.

October 3, 2016October 2, 2016 by Natasha Categories: Movies, movies, Review, Reviews, Romance, UncategorizedTags: Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones’ diary, British, Colin Firth, Edge of Reason, England, Gemma Jones, Hugh Grant, Movies, Neal Pearson, Renee Zellweger, Reviews, sequels 8 Comments

September 2016: Watched, Read, Loved

While I think we should start a drinking game out in public and everyone needs to drink when someone says “CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW FAST THE YEAR WENT” or something similar, I still want to ask you WHERE DID THE YEAR GO? *sips*. It has been so fast. For better or worse I am nearly in my new position for a year now. Life has changed significantly. The last two years has forced me to grow more than I can ever begin to tell you. It’s been hard and it has been enlightening.

Apologies for being incognito last week. I am currently in a war with data in this country, and I refuse to buy more data before my bundle kicks in. South-African data companies are complete sharks. Here is an infographic just how our data cost compares to the rest of the globe: I am so behind the #DataMustFall movement:

Movies watched at home:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (blindspot #7)

I’m well aware that I sound quite old when I say these things, but it has been ages since a movie was unique, beautiful and thought provoking. ESPM managed to be all three of those things. It is impossible to watch that film and just fall a teensy bit in-love with Jim Carrey’s awkward little character. It was so beautiful!

 

Blindspot: Alien (blindspot #8)

My blindspots this year have been awfully meh actually. I chose really good movies but I haven’t really seen any on this list that was made for me. I was so damn happy to get two so on top of each other that I loved. Alien is incredible – from its’ old school action and thriller-style to the strong female heroine, I loved everything about this movie.

Pad na Jou Hart

I got in my Afrikaans fix when I watched this film, and gosh was it worth it. It is actually a good film, and that isn’t always the case with Afrikaans/South-African films. I’m really happy and proud with what they here and can’t wait to get this up and running!

 

The Bourne Identity

Hmm, I love me some young Matt Damon. My bestie and I are planning a short run soon with the Bourne series – it is going to be so great! This is some of Damon’s best work and a pretty great franchise.

 

The Maze Runner

I’m past the point where everything dystopian matters and that is probably why I didn’t really care for this. Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t bad, but ugh, dystopia schmystopia.

 

Pride and Prejudice vs. Zombies

IS THIS MY FAVORITE FILM OF 2016? I have no idea how someone thought adding Zombies to Pride and Prejudice but it works sooooo well. I loved the cast, I loved the Britishness, I loved everything. Review up really soon too!

The Bourne Supremacy

Sequelities did not strike! I thought this was better than Identity, and I really enjoyed Identity.

In the movies:

Bridget Jones’ baby

I had the intense desire to get out of the house and away from my study material to regain sanity and clarity about life. Cue the only available thing in cinema – Bridget Jones’ Baby. It was a risk that paid off, because this might be my second favorite film of 2016 right now. It was Bridget, she’s back, and I loved that they left Renee Zellwegers’ face untouched and had her looked as the character, and the actress, is supposed to look: OLDER.

Series: Game of Thrones Season 6

I finally got around to watching this, and it is great. I’m doing per episode reviews, so soon you’ll see weekly reviews again of the show just when you thought it was over! #muhaha

It’s really good, they cut down on their mutilation of the female species dramatically, and the storyline remained quite strong.

Read:

Let it Snow: John Green/Maureen Johnson/ Lauren Myracle

The review went up here – read please! It is really quite good. Frothy, Christmassy and light, it was fast and sweet to read.

Marian Keyes – The Woman Who Stole My life

Loving this right now, and with this eccentric but well-loved author I’m never quite sure what I’m getting into. Having tons of fun though when I get to read, which isn’t often, but the book is really awesome.

Well, there we go. I’ve squished in a lot of things this month, and hope to be up and running when I emerge victorious from #DataWars

October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Natasha Categories: 2016, Books, Movies, Review, Reviews, UncategorizedTags: Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones' baby, Colin Firth, flashback, monthly rundowns, Movies, Patrick Dempsey, Renee, Renee Zellwegers, September 7 Comments

Book Review: Mad About The Boy (Helen Fielding)

Plot:    Fourteen years after landing Mark Darcy, Bridget’s life has taken her places she never expected. But despite the new challenges of single parenting, online dating, wildly morphing dress sizes, and bafflingly complex remote controls, she is the same irrepressible and endearing soul we all remember—though her talent for embarrassing herself in hilarious ways has become dangerously amplified now that she has 752 Twitter followers. As Bridget navigates head lice epidemics, school-picnic humiliations, and cross-generational sex, she learns that life isn’t over when you start needing reading glasses—and why one should never, ever text while drunk.
Studded with witty observations about the perils and absurdities of our times, Mad About the Boy is both outrageously comic and genuinely moving. As we watch her dealing with heartbreaking loss and rediscovering love and joy, Bridget invites us to fall for her all over again.

Rating: 6.5/10

My little reading challenge is progressing much better than my Blindspot 2016 challenge, and I am rapidly going through books. Touch wood, but so far I’ve enjoyed both the books I read. The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks was first to be finished, and not a bad read, and I finished Mad About the Boy last night.

I’m going to go on about the size a bit, because this book is too thick for what it is about. Reading about Twitter followers, nits, weight, fires and boy toys are entertaining for the first hundred pages, but it gets boring rather quickly. The book was running on fumes at the end, I was questioning Bridget’s parenting skills most harshly and the main event this book was so obviously hurtling towards was rushed within ten pages.

Mark Darcy’s death. This cat was let out of the bag the second the book was released hence I had no surprise when I finally read that it had happened. My feelings towards it? Shattered. He is a perfect literary character and his power only strengthened by the fact that Colin Firth portrayed him so well in the movie adaption. The sections where Bridget finally sits down and thinks of him is heart wrenching. I understand why the writer went that route – to bring a book out about Bridget it would either have to be after his death or after their divorce, and I will take his death before the thought that they could ever be divorced.

Bridget with too much money and children. Her relationship with her children was sweet and beautiful at stages, but I also questioned her parenting skills. I maintain that when you have children you are certainly allowed to still enjoy life, but never to a point where you don’t take care of the children you conceived. Ever. Male or female parents, I draw a firm line. You chose to raise a kid, you raise them. Okay, now that that is out of the way, I guess you can see that Bridget’s parenting did not sit too well for me.

Mr. Wallaker. Come on. Everyone could spot this a mile away.

The book is basically the first novel with some extras.

Weight: Yes

Obsessive eating: yes

Playboy: Daniel/Roxster

Eventual responsible love: Mark Darcy/MrWallaker

I didn’t hate the book. It is just not equal to the first. It has some funny and some sad and despite the size, it is an easy read.

Have you read the book? What did you think?

March 8, 2016March 8, 2016 by Natasha Categories: 2016, Books, UncategorizedTags: Books, Bridget Jones, Bridget Jones’ diary, Helen Fielding, Mad about the Boy, Mark Darcy, Reading 6 Comments

Book Review: Bridget Jones’s Diary (Helen Fields)

Plot:

Bridget Jones is on the verge of thirty. She has the normal issues: weight, work, her relationship status and her worries that all her vices are addictions and that she is in trouble. She is also faced with the decimation of her parents’ marriage, and her mother’s midlife crisis. After yet another Christmas nightmare of being bombarded with “when are you getting married?” and “your biological clock is ticking”, Bridget decides to change her life by losing weight, becoming glamorous and getting a man. Her delicious boss starts taking notice of her, and a relationship develops, but Daniel is also a man affected by the “fuckwittage” Bridget and her friends witness in London – men in their thirties completely mind fucking the ladies and the women just taking it as it comes. Although she takes him on about it, he still messes with her and she is eventually heartbroken when she finds him with a skinny, gorgeous girl, cheating on her.

Bridget still has to deal with Mark Darcy, the man her mother wants to hook her up with. Determined to dislike him on principle, she is soon confused by Mark – although he acts very odd sometimes he also has a kind nature about some things. He obviously dislikes even the mention of Daniel, and Bridget struggles to understand why.

Can Bridget sort out her life? Why does Mark dislike Daniel so strongly? Who will Bridget end up with, if she ever manages a relationship?

Rating: 7/10

I chose this book at my favorite second hand book shop for one reason: I needed something light and fluffy to read on the beach. Well, it was a successful choice because it certainly was light and fluffy, and hilarious as well. I really laughed out loud at a few places and had some much needed giggles while I associated with Bridget. I think most twenty somethings will find something in Bridget they associate with – she is obsessed with her weight, neurotic about her love life and constantly finds new addictions or things to obsess about. Her life doesn’t make sense, she is surrounded by a balanced mixture of horrible people and true friends. Bridget messes up constantly, she’s insecure but still determined to somehow make something work, and she’s not giving up. Her very embarrassing and awkward life makes her immediately identifiable, and I really understand why this book became an instant hit.

I loved the character a whole lot and will definitely read this again. The book is well written and very easy to read, but you must be willing to adapt to the whole diary format the book is written in. I am planning to watch the movie again soon, to see if it is a good adaption.

Recommendation: Light and fun, for those who needs a happy book.

December 10, 2014 by Natasha Categories: Books, ReviewsTags: Books, Bridget Jones, Helen Fields, Mark Darcy, Reviews 7 Comments