80
She's (Zellweger) so disarming and so deeply Bridget -- gliding between mortifying slapstick and pathos -- that she's entirely won you over by the time the credits have rolled. The opening credits.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
The three-act structure is too predictable, and at 90 minutes, feels both draggy and hacked to the bone.
70
Quite likable -- even sometimes, with the squeezable Zellweger its principal object, lovable.
40
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
How can you celebrate a movie in which Zellweger doesn't soar but simply avoids disaster?
80
Bessed with a gleamingly polished, very funny script.
75
The film not only works better than expected but gets the important things right, starting, of course, with Zellweger's Bridget and Bridget's mind-set.
50
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
I could have done without all the pushy tactics of this romantic comedy.
50
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
The filmmakers spend so much time milking gags they should have called it Bridget Jones's Dairy.
80
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
Grant is casually fabulous and very amusing, but all power to Firth the actor. He's the compleat Darcy, and he never wavers.
75
Where the highly likable actress (Zellweger) proves most valuable is in making us adore this insecure, clumsy, contradictory creature.
Although cliche and predictable, what makes this film stand out is Renée Zellweger performance in it. She manages to make audiences root for and even fall in love with a clumsy, crass, and often contradictory character. It's the first film in a classic romcom series that will never go out of style.