“Another year, another diary,” Renee Zellweger intones in her now flawless British accent at the start of “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.”
Really, though, it reads like the same book, only written in a slightly different shade of ink.
This follow-up to the enormously successful “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” which was smarter and funnier that its innate chick-flick tendencies would suggest, is more of a remake than a sequel.
Certain scenes, images and pieces of dialogue are nearly identical to the 2001 original — including Bridget’s mum’s Christmas turkey-curry buffet at the film’s start — which perhaps is intended to provide the audience with a sense of familiarity and comfort, but instead smacks of laziness.
“Bridget Jones” author Helen Fielding and Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”) are among the four people credited with concocting the script, which is sort of mind-boggling when you think about it. Four writers, over three years, with returning stars Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, now under the direction of Beeban Kidron (whose previous films include the excellent “Antonia and Jane”) and this is the best they could come up with? It’s all so disappointing, especially if you’ve watched the first “Bridget Jones” recently to get geared up for part two and are riding a wave of expectation.
“Edge of Reason” picks up several weeks later, with the once miserably single Bridget now blissfully dating (and frequently shagging) Mark Darcy (Firth), the sweet but seriously uptight human-rights lawyer. She’s still making an idiot of herself on cue as a roving reporter for the TV show “Sit Up, Britain!” which (way too conveniently) has hired her sleazy ex, Daniel Cleaver (Grant), as a travel correspondent.
(Let’s stop here a moment. I’m sorry, is it wrong to want Bridget to hook up with Daniel again, even just casually? Yeah, he cheated on her and deceived her, but he’s so sexy and naw-ty and so much more fun than that stuffy Mr. Darcy. Yeah, he’s a cad, but he and Bridget enjoy such fabulously flirty banter, it makes “Edge of Reason” a whole lot more watchable when he’s around.)
They have plenty of opportunities for banter when (again, way too conveniently) they’re sent on assignment together to Thailand. The trip happens to take place just as Bridget is jonesing for Mark to propose — though, after only about eight weeks of dating, isn’t it a bit soon for such talk? She’s also worried about their inherent class differences, as well as the perceived threat of Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett), Mark’s beautiful, leggy co-worker, who seems to be at his house all the time.
Thankfully, Bridget’s trio of eccentric pals (Sally Phillips, James Callis and Shirley Henderson, back for round two) have been there with a drink, a ciggie and a well-timed quip to make it all better.
Once in Thailand, though, all that security is chucked out the window, and Bridget suddenly is being arrested at the airport on her way home after cops find a huge amount of cocaine in her carry-on bag (the result of a fling her girlfriend, Shazzer, enjoyed while along for the vacation).
At this point, it’s as if Kidron yanked an enormous emergency brake; “Edge of Reason” becomes a totally different movie — namely “Brokedown Palace,” from 1999, starring Kate Beckinsale and Claire Danes.
Bridget ends up spending time in a Thai prison, where she teaches her English-challenged female cellmates the correct words to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and leads them in an awkward sing-along. She also listens to their tales of woe: boyfriends who beat them, got them hooked on drugs, turned them out on the streets. Both these experiences are played for strained laughs.
Nevertheless, Zellweger continues to prove herself game for every humiliating physical predicament. It’s just hard to care about these people this time around — maybe because they’re all a little less likable, or maybe because the entire experience simply feels a little too rote.