Baby It's You

The 12-year gestation period is over. Renée Zellweger returns this week as Bridget Jones — still single… but pregnant! — for a third installment in the beloved Brit rom-com series.

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Remember when the 1996 novel Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding was to be made into a movie, how aghast fans were at the casting of an American actress with a southern drawl?

Well, Renée Zellweger, Texas native, silenced naysayers with her endearing, relatable rendering of the title heroine Bridget Jones, a London single trying to navigate work, friends and sex. The British romantic comedy Bridget Jones’s Diary was as much a hit in the UK as in the US and around the world, earning Zellweger best actress nominations at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes.

It is unthinkable now for anyone else to play Bridget.

Three years later was the sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason based on Fielding’s 1999 bestseller of the same title.

And back in Bridget Jones’s Baby this week are Bridget after a 12-year absence and Zellweger after a six-year career break. “You simply can’t make Bridget without Renée!” exclaims director Sharon Maguire.

It was with Maguire that Zellweger initiated Bridget’s cinematic journey. The second installment directed by Beeban Kidron, while successful commercially, was ill received by reviewers, so this reunion of Maguire and Zellweger for a trilogy bookend is fitting.

Colin Firth also returns, as Bridget’s seemingly perfect match Mark Darcy. The two have broken up. Unbowed, Bridget is flourishing at work, producing a television news programme, has a great flat, wonderful friends and is generally happy until an attempt at re-entering the dating world finds her spending the night with American billionaire Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey). Around the same time she reconnects briefly with Mr Darcy.