Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Picking up from the first outing for the ditzy "Bridget" (Renée Zellweger), she is now six weeks into her doting relationship with human rights lawyer "Mark" (Colin Firth). Thanks also to a bit of skydiving and some pigs, she is finding her broadcasting career blossoming too and with boss "Richard" (Neil Pearson) keen to build her part up, she is annoyingly partnered with smarmy old beau "Daniel" (Hugh Grant) and despatched to do a travelogue on Thailand. He's a charmer is that one, but she knows he cannot be trusted. That's successfully proven when she gets herself caught up in a drug smuggling caper and confined to a 40-to-a-cell women's prison with only one fairly hapless Foreign Office gent telling her how sticky her wicket is! Can she be rescued? Can she get back to her beloved? Of course there's not a jot of jeopardy to any of this, and in the intervening three years since the first film this character has lost much of her charm and punch. In many ways this just mirrors that story only it's not so innovative any more. There's still plenty to poke fun at amidst her sexist and accident-prone environment and Zellweger really does have the character down to an hapless T now, but I just felt I knew what was coming long before it did and the writing this time around defers all to often to the soundtrack. It's amiable enough, but a little tired and predictable.