Bridget Jones's Diary

Bridget Jones is a franchise based on the fictional character with the same name. English writer Helen Fielding started her Bridget Jones's Diary... column in The Independent in 1995, chronicling the life of Bridget Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life and love with the help of a surrogate "urban family" of friends in the 1990s. The column lampooned the obsession of women with women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan and wider social trends in Britain at the time. Helen Fielding published the novelisation of the column in 1996, followed by a sequel in 1999 called Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Both novels were adapted for the big screen in 2001 and 2004, starring Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones, and Hugh Grant and Colin Firth as the men in her life, Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy. After Fielding had ceased to work for The Daily Telegraph in late 1998, the feature began again in The Independent on 4 August 2005 and finished in June 2006. Bridget Jones graduated from Bangor University. She is a single, thirty-eight-year-old woman whose life is a satirised version of the stereotypical single London thirty-something in the nineties.
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Release date:April 4, 2001

Directed by:Sharon Maguire

Rated:

Runtime:97 minutes

Bridget Jones's Diary is a 2001 British romantic comedy film based on Helen Fielding's novel of the same name. The adaptation stars Renée Zellweger as Bridget, Hugh Grant as the caddish Daniel Cleaver, and Colin Firth as Bridget's "true love", Mark Darcy. A sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of... Reason, was released in 2004. Actresses who were considered for the role of Bridget Jones were Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Rachel Weisz, and Cameron Diaz. Toni Collette declined the role because she was on Broadway starring in The Wild Party at the time, and Kate Winslet was considered but the producers decided she was too young. Before the film was released, a considerable amount of controversy surrounded the casting of the American Zellweger as what some saw as a quintessentially British heroine. However, her performance is widely considered to be of a high standard, including her English accent. The director of the film, Sharon Maguire, is one of Fielding's friends whom the character of "Shazzer" was reportedly based on. In the film, "Shazzer" was played by Sally Phillips. Zellweger was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film.
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A comic novel is a work of fiction in which the writer not only seeks to amuse the reader, but also to make the reader think about controversial... issues, sometimes with subtlety and as part of a carefully woven narrative; sometimes, above all other considerations. It is more important to unmask the ideas or themes of a comic rather than just the simple plot. One of the most notable British comic novelists is P. G. Wodehouse, whose work follows on from that of Jerome K. Jerome and George & Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody. Saki's work is also significant although his career was cut short by World War I. A. G. Macdonell and G. K. Chesterton also produced flights of whimsy. Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, was a notable mid-18th century work in the genre. Other, more contemporary UK authors of this kind include Tom Sharpe, Kingsley Amis, Terry Pratchett, Richard Gordon, Rob Grant, Ian Ross, Douglas Adams, Evelyn Waugh, Nick Hornby, Eric Sykes, Leslie Thomas, Stephen Fry, Richard Asplin, Mike Harding, Joseph Connolly, and Ben Elton.
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