But Isn’t Bridget a Brit?

Every reader, devouring a favorite book, has already made the movie version. As we flip the pages and sink into the web of words, we reflexively mouth the dialogue, envision the characters, view the scene from an ironic distance or in a closeup that captures the subtlest smile or tear. When the book is one as cherished as Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, any “real” film version can seem like a kidnapping. And when the producers announce that they have chosen a Texas gal to play the uniquely London Bridget, outrage is in store. Through the literate universe rings a phrase one rarely hears these days: How dare they!?

Well, they dared and they did. And they did right. One long glance at Houston’s own Renée Zellweger, and all anxiety about the casting of an American as Britain’s favorite wounded bird of the ’90s vanishes. (Hey, if Vivien Leigh could play Scarlett O’Hara…) The actress is so very sort-of-English, with her ruddy skin, self-abasing zinger wit and a bosom more maternal than erotic; it looks like thigh flab that has somehow migrated north.

Zellweger put on a stone or so for the role. More important, she seems to have picked up some extra IQ points; she usually plays wan, befuddled victim types. With her new heft and savvy, she perfectly fits in (to the London book world) and stands out (as befits a star, and an imported one at that). Then the plot ripens, and two handsome men — rapacious Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and dull Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) — tumble vagrantly into her heart. That’s when Zellweger reveals, as in a soul’s striptease, Bridget’s appeal. Inside this “verbally incontinent spinster” (as Darcy calls her), a brilliant vamp is aching to be set free.

In Fielding’s book, the diary form offered comic counterpoint between the real Bridget and the one she thinks the world sees. In the movie, it allows viewers access to her percolating mind; we need to hear her musings to appreciate how amusing she is. The voice-over narration also provides insights into the decisions facing any modern woman — such as which undergarment to wear to a social engagement. Let’s see: should it be the “scary, stomach-holding-in panties” (for a good first impression), or the “genuinely tiny knickers” (for the proper frisson at a crucial moment)?

Either way, Bridget risks embarrassing herself and the world, and ending up at home, alone, determined to fight depression by going both blotto and disco. “I chose vodka and Chaka Khan,” she says, taking a swig as I’m Every Woman ascends to suicide-obliterating volume. For Bridget, that pulsing anthem has the inspirational lift of an Oscar Hammerstein hymn; it should be called Climb, Every Woman.

The script is by Fielding, Andrew Davies (bbc’s Pride and Prejudice) and Richard Curtis (Blackadder, Notting Hill), who together constitute a virtual conglomerate of upper-middle-class Brit humor. They give good lines and cunning motives to the stars — especially Grant, who subverts all his decent-chap roles by showing up Keith Richards-thin, with a tart tongue and unsmiling eyes; he’s irresistible as a randy cad. Most of the other men play variations on the old Grant character. Firth, swoonworthy as ever, has to stand by, waiting for Bridget to realize he’s dotty about her. Jim Broadbent, as her henpecked dad, is a Wallace without his Gromit. Even Salman Rushdie, who materializes in a publishing-party scene, is asked no question more demanding than “Where’s the loo?”

There’s a catastrophic third act that comprises about 14 endings, two transatlantic flights and a clumsy fight scene that will not remind you of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It threatens to ruin the mood — that juggle of slapstick and rue — that director Sharon Maguire has so deftly managed. We’ll be kind, and say of this climactic mess that it’s just the mistake Bridget would have made if she had directed the film of her own life.

At heart, this is a very Bridget-ish romantic comedy: quite comic, and even more romantic. That Firth, who was the dark dreamboat Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, plays the dull dreamboat Darcy in Bridget simply underlines the comedy-of-manners connection between Helen Fielding’s work and Jane Austen’s. Here’s a tale of frantic good sense and indestructible sensibility, so enjoyable that … why, it’s almost as good as your version of the book.