Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends.
If your account is linked with Facebook and you have turned on sharing, this will show up in your activity feed. If not, you can turn on sharing
here
.
Based on Nick Hornby's best-selling novel, About A Boy is the story of a cynical, immature young man who is taught how to act like a grown-up by a little boy
Follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely and interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England.
In 1990, to protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, a young man must keep her from learning that her beloved nation of East Germany as she knew it has disappeared.
Director:
Wolfgang Becker
Stars:
Daniel Brühl,
Katrin Saß,
Chulpan Khamatova
Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her many imperfections. As a New Year's Resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget's band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance who Bridget cannot seem to stop running into or help finding quietly attractive. Written by
Anuja Varghese <anujav@excite.com>
During the end credits, we see footage of a home movie taken during a birthday party, which also happens to be the birthday party that both Bridget and Mark are at that is referred to several times during the movie. See more »
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
What really makes this movie stand out from a venerable list of other working girl fantasies is the familiar but one-of-a-kind personality of the irrepressible Bridget Jones. Created by novelist Helen Fielding, who also wrote the script, and brought to life by the talented and zany Renée Zellweger, Bridget Jones is a 32-year-old pleasingly plump London working girl, a "...verbally incontinent spinster who...dresses like her mother" (to quote Colin Firth's character, Mark Darcy). She is also clumsy, the kind of girl who might spill sauce on her blouse, a little overweight, smokes, drinks too much and sometimes says what she thinks without consulting her brain. She is also very good at improvising on the spot, a talent that charms not only the two leading men, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, who vie for her affection, but also the five o'clock news audience who like her bum and knickers just fine.
Director Sharon Maguire, in her first outing, combines Brit witticisms, slapstick pratfalls, raunchy, sharp and realistic dialogue, and a blatant but inoffensive sentimentality into a romantic comedy that surely has Nora Ephron and Julia Roberts paying close attention. She keeps us guessing about who will get the girl (and who really deserves the girl) with the usual misdirections and misunderstandings characteristic of the genre. There's a little dead time about half way in, and the uncertainty about whether Bridget wants Hugh Grant or Colin Firth is milked a bit overmuch, otherwise this is nicely paced entertainment sure to chase away a blue afternoon.
Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are both very good, and Gemma Jones as Bridget's mother is a charming, dotty sight to see. Bridget's friends are funny as a kind of foil to the tired glamor of Yank TV's "Friends." And there's a darling "home movie" sequence during the closing credits purporting to recall Bridget at four and Mark Darcy at eight, that retrospectively and adorably frames the movie.
Should a CHICK FLICK ALERT be declared here? No doubt, but thanks to a warm, bubbly, funny and decidedly unprudish and unaffected (and I must say, somewhat daring) performance by Zellweger, we'll ignore it because we "like her just the way she is."
30 of 32 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)
What really makes this movie stand out from a venerable list of other working girl fantasies is the familiar but one-of-a-kind personality of the irrepressible Bridget Jones. Created by novelist Helen Fielding, who also wrote the script, and brought to life by the talented and zany Renée Zellweger, Bridget Jones is a 32-year-old pleasingly plump London working girl, a "...verbally incontinent spinster who...dresses like her mother" (to quote Colin Firth's character, Mark Darcy). She is also clumsy, the kind of girl who might spill sauce on her blouse, a little overweight, smokes, drinks too much and sometimes says what she thinks without consulting her brain. She is also very good at improvising on the spot, a talent that charms not only the two leading men, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, who vie for her affection, but also the five o'clock news audience who like her bum and knickers just fine.
Director Sharon Maguire, in her first outing, combines Brit witticisms, slapstick pratfalls, raunchy, sharp and realistic dialogue, and a blatant but inoffensive sentimentality into a romantic comedy that surely has Nora Ephron and Julia Roberts paying close attention. She keeps us guessing about who will get the girl (and who really deserves the girl) with the usual misdirections and misunderstandings characteristic of the genre. There's a little dead time about half way in, and the uncertainty about whether Bridget wants Hugh Grant or Colin Firth is milked a bit overmuch, otherwise this is nicely paced entertainment sure to chase away a blue afternoon.
Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are both very good, and Gemma Jones as Bridget's mother is a charming, dotty sight to see. Bridget's friends are funny as a kind of foil to the tired glamor of Yank TV's "Friends." And there's a darling "home movie" sequence during the closing credits purporting to recall Bridget at four and Mark Darcy at eight, that retrospectively and adorably frames the movie.
Should a CHICK FLICK ALERT be declared here? No doubt, but thanks to a warm, bubbly, funny and decidedly unprudish and unaffected (and I must say, somewhat daring) performance by Zellweger, we'll ignore it because we "like her just the way she is."