As the Bible of thirtysomething single women everywhere, “Bridget Jones’s Diary” is one of the most eagerly awaited book-to-screen adaptations in recent memory. Informed by author Helen Fielding’s droll observations of a year in the life of her weight-obsessed, love-starved heroine, the novel hit a bull’s eye with women on both sides of the Atlantic. As a film, however, item misses its mark, failing to capitalize on the staccato rhythms and sardonic wit of Bridget’s inner life. That said, pic’s pre-sell value is solid enough to suggest initially healthy B.O. that could continue to generate decent returns, even as it will inevitably disappoint some of the book’s devotees.

Introduced in a series of columns in the U.K.’s Independent, Fielding’s lovably imperfect Bridget with her incessant calorie counting, cigarette smoking and wine-swilling, inflected the British vernacular with a personal lexicon that divided her community into “Singletons” and “Smug-marrieds.” Little surprise, then, that the unlikely casting of American thesp Renee Zellweger over British actresses caused a row not seen since Tom Cruise donned fangs to play the vampire Lestat.

The good news is that Zellweger delivers as Bridget, and her fellow actors, including Hugh Grant and Colin Firth as the men she must choose between, are exceptionally well cast.

The bad news is that despite being edited down to a bare-bones 90-odd minutes, forcing the elimination of key characters and scenes and the underdevelopment of others, pic manages to feel, paradoxically, as dramatically flabby as the 10 pounds Bridget cannot seem to shed.

Things start off promisingly, with Bridget alone in her flat comically crooning along with the radio. Awash in red flannel pajamas and a wine-induced haze, cheerfully oblivious and singing “All by Myself,” Zellweger breathes full-bodied life into Bridget. Opening title sequence is the movie’s best bit.

Soon she’s off to a holiday turkey-curry buffet where, for the umpteenth time, family friends barrage her with questions about her love life. Though her irrepressible mum (Gemma Jones) is scheming to fix her up with a childhood friend, party guest and top barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), Bridget, who suffers from foot-in-mouth disease, botches the encounter.

Needless to say, it is not a love connection. It’s not that Mark Darcy is so awful; it’s just that he’s a sartorially challenged snob who loftily dismisses Bridget’s attempt to make conversation. She much prefers mooning over Daniel Cleaver (Grant), her cad of a boss who has finally begun to take notice of her Ally McBeal-length skirts.

After a blissful and sex-filled courtship with Daniel, Bridget makes an unfortunate discovery that ends their romance. Not to worry, suggest her Singleton best friends Shazza (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (James Callis): There’s life beyond Daniel.

Surprisingly, there’s been interest from Mark Darcy, who’s apologized for his earlier behavior. In a thoroughly overstaged sequence that transpires at Bridget’s 32nd birthday party, there’s a showdown between Mark and Daniel leaving Bridget in a “Pride and Prejudice”-type dilemma of choosing between two men.

Above sequence, which is not in the book, has the effect of visually underscoring the conflict and further delineating Mark’s and Daniel’s own bitter history, but it reduces her friends to a simpering chorus. Other sequences memorable from the book are re-created with mixed success, including Bridget’s arrival at a “Tarts and Vicars” party in full Playboy bunny regalia, mortified to discover the party theme had been changed, and an infamous scene that finds Bridget trying to scurry up a fire pole.

Zellweger is a tireless sport about all of this. And despite the initial furor over her casting, her best roles (in “Jerry Maguire” and “Nurse Betty”) have indicated a sweetness, vulnerability and comic timing that make her perfect for Bridget. Gaining some 20 pounds, the actress has transformed herself into a lumpy, fleshy everywoman.

Grant and Firth are impeccable. Firth, whose performance as Mr. Darcy in the BBC’s “Pride and Prejudice” was the model for Fielding’s Mark Darcy, brings unexpected depth to his role, while Grant, for once, thankfully gets to play against type. And perhaps it’s no small coincidence that both actors are mentioned in the book.

Documentary director Sharon Maguire, the real-life model for Fielding’s Shazza, has shown an uncertain hand in her first feature. Script by Fielding, Richard Curtis (“Notting Hill” scribe) and BBC “Pride and Prejudice” writer Andrew Davies could have benefited from using elements of the book’s diary structure, a framework it first adopts then jettisons inexplicably.

Pic also seems to suffer in some scenes from a lack of color correction.

Screendaily (March 19, 2001) by Sheila Johnson

Bridget Jones's bestselling diaries made the fictional thirtysomething singleton Britain's most successful under-achiever of recent years, and the screen version of her intimate journal bears all the signs of becoming the UK's biggest film hit since Notting Hill.

Domestically, massive advance publicity and media attention will guarantee dazzling opening figures, while the reputation of the books in the US should secure equally healthy business there.

If the film is to build this into solid longer-term box office, then it must establish itself as more than a chick flick with appeal to the obvious demographic. Instead, it will need to position itself more broadly as a modern social satire-date movie that can attract those men lured along earlier this year to What Women Want by the presence of Mel Gibson (but without a comparable male character for them to root for).

The diaries have been published in some 30 countries, but in territories where the book has been less of a cultural phenomenon than on its home turf, the film's performance will, to a greater extent, be review-driven, aided by the names of Renee Zellweger in the title role and Hugh Grant as the second male lead. Prospects in all ancillary media are, as Bridget would put it, v. v. good.

A character invented by journalist Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones herself is a none-too-effective publishing PR in her early 30s with a mass of addictions—cigarettes, drink, junk food and lottery cards—who aims to achieve happiness by losing weight and finding true romance. Her diary chronicling the ongoing chaos of her life and her farcically unsuccessful struggle to realise her modest ambitions made a low-key debut in 1995 as a weekly column in UK national newspaper The Independent, but gathered momentum after Fielding was encouraged to rework it as a book.

When it did go into paperback it became a cult success, spawning a sequel, The Edge Of Reason. Like such American TV sitcoms as Sex And The City and Ally McBeal, and Hollywood movies such as Waiting To Exhale, its success has been generally attributed to the swelling numbers of single thirtysomething women experiencing difficulties in reconciling the conflicting demands of love and career.

Structured much like the novel, the movie traces a year in the life of its heroine, beginning with Bridget's ghastly Christmas-New Year celebrations with her parents and their neighbours. During the following months, she has an ill-advised fling with her flirty caddish boss (Grant, offering an enjoyably acerbic variant on his usual bumbling screen image); observes her parents' marital problems after her mother makes off with a sleazy presenter from a home shopping channel; makes her own foray into television when she swaps her publishing job for a gig as a news presenter; spends many a long, boozy evening with her gaggle of sweet, but hopelessly dysfunctional, female and gay friends; and gradually warms to the subtle attractions of Mark Darcy (Firth), a stuffy, though ultimately charming (and extremely rich), human rights lawyer.

Boasting the same production company (Working Title), star (Grant) and co-screenwriter (Richard Curtis) as Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill, Bridget Jones shares those two earlier films' comic tone and similar themes of the peculiarly British knack for self-deprecation and underachievement, both professionally and romantically. As in Fielding's book, there are also deliberate parallels with Pride And Prejudice, both in the name of the leading man and in the presence of Firth (who played Mr Darcy in the recent BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's classic) in this role. Grant also has his own indirect link with the original novel, which takes a passing potshot at the actor's real-life dalliance with a Hollywood hooker.

Curtis's co-scriptwriter, along with Fielding, is Andrew Davies, distinguished for his television adaptations of literary classics, including that same BBC version of Pride And Prejudice. And the film's director—the documentary film-maker Sharon Maguire making her feature debut—is a friend of the author, acknowledged at the front of the novel, as well as being the model for one of Bridget's best friends, also called Sharon. The in-casting extends down to relatively small roles such as the lecherous tabloid news producer played by Neil Pearson, who UK audiences will remember as much the same character in the TV comedy series Drop The Dead Donkey. The writers Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer contribute cameos as themselves.

At times, this all threatens to add up to an air of smug and incestuous London media-set clubbiness, so the choice of an American actress for the leading role—greeted, when it was announced, with some hostility in the British press—turns out in many ways to be a shrewd decision. The film stands or falls by whether one accepts Zellweger's central performance and, sporting a credible British accent (if one several social notches above the level you would expect of her character), she lends Bridget an exuberance and sexiness undiminished by the fact that she gained at least 14 pounds for the role.

Some fans of the book may find her too sweet and fluffy for the character (Bridget had a sharp tongue on her when required). Still, it's refreshing to see a weight-obsessed heroine who really is on the pudgy side, even if the actress is often shot in a way which does her no favours, with stringy hair and a flushed, bloated face.

Grant and Firth are well-placed as the male leads, although in its anxiety to present itself as a romantic comedy, the film gives short shrift to the other supporting characters—notably Bridget's three best friends and sitcomy mother (Jones)— although Jim Broadbent stands out as her gentle, brow-beaten father. It could also be argued that, in cutting many of the books' topical references to current events of the mid-1990s, the focus of the film has been further narrowed. Maguire's comic touch is a little heavy at times, but technical credits are, overall, polished.