Movie:
Bridget Jones is back! It's Christmas again and once again the obligatory Christmas party at the parents' house is on the agenda - including, of course, the groping "Uncle" Geoffrey . But this year something is different: Bridget is happy. The reason is none other than star lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who has conquered Bridget's heart, beating out his rival, the sleazy Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). Bridget is on cloud nine, Mark is everything she has always dreamed of. At least for the first six weeks, when the sky is full of violins and the young couple can hardly get out of bed.
But now Bridget asks herself the question: what actually comes after the happy ending? Does one really live "happily ever after? This question becomes immensely important when Bridget realizes at a party that she doesn't fit into Mark's high society world at all. With her few pounds too many, her failed attempt at make-up in the taxi and her rather loose mouth, Bridget stands out rather negatively at the reception, quite the opposite of Mark's new, charming colleague. Bridget is once again thrown into emotional chaos. It doesn't help that her boss demands she work with her ex-lover Daniel Cleaver, of all people.
Nach the phenomenal success of the best-selling film adaptation "Bridget Jones - Chocolate for Breakfast" it was actually only a matter of time until the second book by author Helen Fielding would also find its way to the big screen. The prerequisite was, of course, that Bridget actress Renee Zellweger once again agreed to put on quite a few pounds for this role in order to become the chubby cinema darling that millions of women and men all over the world have learned to love. The second installment was directed by Beeban Kidron, who made her comedy "Too Wong Fu - Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" was a respectable success. Kidron was now faced with the difficult task of making the far weaker second Bridget Jones novel as endearing and amusing as Sharon Maguire managed to do with the first part. And indeed, at the beginning of the film, the calculation seems to work: "Bridget Jones - On the Verge of Insanity" begins almost absolutely identically to Part 1, only to come up with an amusing twist that works as a successful counterpoint to the title sequence of "Chocolate for Breakfast". Other elements from the predecessor, such as the delightful duel between Mark and Daniel, are also skillfully repeated and varied, so that the viewer will still have a blast watching these scenes the second time around.
A successful sequel, however, should not only repeat the best elements from the first installment, but also come up with new ideas. This is definitely the case with the second Bridget Jones movie. But it's just the new ideas that don't really want to work. Bridget's attempt to buy a pregnancy test in Austria is still absolutely delicious, but her work-related trip to Thailand with Daniel ends in a chaos that really hurts the film as a whole. While the story of the first movie was still realistic and comprehensible to a certain extent, part two degenerates into a dull comedy at this point, which deals with a serious topic in a completely superficial and cheap way, although there are one or two amusing moments here as well. Only the aftermath of this less than successful episode is worth watching again, but that doesn't make the sag any less disappointing. Here it becomes clear that even the novel already lacks as much originality and bite as it did with the first book.
Bridget Jones also threatens to become a caricature of herself. Director Kidron has gone a bit overboard in highlighting Bridget's physical "deficiencies. What seemed endearing and genuine in the first film, just seems clumsy here (which doesn't just refer to appearances, but also to Bridget's behavior), making it less comprehensible why Daniel and Mark put up such a fight for the woman of their dreams, and why she also becomes an object of desire for yet another person. After all, the big plus from the first part was that there was finally a woman in the movie who wasn't perfect and was so "normal" for that very reason. One . no. Woman could relate to her and men could definitely understand why Bridget had a certain appeal to their movie men. Yet Bridget Jones, for all her flaws, was ultimately somehow a strong character who, in the second part, unfortunately too often degenerates into a cheap laughing stock precisely because of her appearance. Much of the charm that made her so endearing was taken away from her. This has been replaced with nice slapstick interludes, which are amusing in places, but in doing so have a negative impact on the overall image of Bridget Jones.
In the end, "Bridget Jones - On the Verge of Madness" is a very entertaining film overall, proving once again that sequels often take a back seat to the original. A once again superbly slimy Hugh Grant and some delightfully funny scenes make this film well worth watching, but the desire for a third part is unlikely to arise in most viewers.
Picture:
Technically, one should have expected far more from a recent film like this. The picture quality is only mediocre, sharpness and contrast could definitely be better. The colours, on the other hand, are very pleasing and there is also no dirt visible. For this there is nevertheless only a very scarce "gut"!
Sound:
The sound is in contrast to the picture quality already somewhat better, which may be due to the fact that there are hardly any scenes in which the sound system is really challenged. But the dialogue, the most important aspect of the film, is well intelligible and the music pleasantly mixed in space. Here there is a more appropriate "gut"!
Extras:
The extras of the DVD are nice in themselves, but inconsequential - like the film itself. The cut scenes, each introduced by director Beeban Kidron, are the most enjoyable here. The longest cut sequence "The Baptism" is really worth watching and shows very clearly what the film lacks in the end: real emotion! In this respect, it might have done the film some good if this scene had made it into the final cut. But also the other deleted scenes are really worth seeing and make this almost 15-minute extra extremely worth seeing.
A sequence was also cut, which is one of the most popular scenes for lovers of the novel. Namely, in the novel, Bridget interviews none other than Colin Firth (famously the actor who plays Mark Darcey). The biggest problem the makers had with this scene was finding an actor to play Colin Firth. And so the scene was unceremoniously dropped from the script, which didn't stop Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth from doing this fictional interview (approx. 5 mins) anyway. The result is a really funny extra that thankfully made it onto this DVD.
The rest of the extras, on the other hand, are pretty inconsequential and generally consist of lots of film clips, some short interviews and footage from the filming. These featurettes are "The Short Trip to Austria" (about 4 min.), "A Slick Guide to Exotic Thailand" (about 4 min.), "The Big Fight" (about 5 min, about the amusing duel between Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver), "Mark and Bridget: Forever and Ever?" (approx. 5:30 min.) as well as "Lonely in London" (approx. 3 min, about the effects in a key scene of the film). In addition, there is the interactive test "Welcher passt zu Ihnen", which can also be played during the film, and an audio commentary by the director. This is quite interesting, but unfortunately Beeban Kidron has such a soporific way of talking that it is almost exhausting to follow this commentary. Very commendable is that all extras are optionally subtitled!
Conclusion:
The second part of "Bridget Jones" is quite entertaining, but also would not really have been necessary. Fans are offered a DVD that is technically only average and, apart from a few nice cut scenes and a funny interview, offers only superficial extras that are unfortunately not as lush as Bridget Jones itself. Not a must buy, but fine for fans!
Original title: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Director: Beeban Kidron
Number of discs: 1
Languages: English, German (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: German, English, Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic
Image Format: 16:9 (2.40:1)
Extras: Audio commentary, cut scenes, trailer, interactive type test, 5 featurettes, interview: Bridget and Colin Firth
FSK: age 6+
length: approx. 104 min.
Regional Code: 2
Ein Artikel von Frankfurt-Tipp
