Between the Book and Movie, Bridget’s Spine Just Disappears

The woman on the screen thinks El Nino is a Latin band. She bites her lip and asks coy questions and stumbles through life on the verge of tears.

When her transparently loutish boyfriend announces a sudden urge to leave in the middle of a romantic country weekend, her face crumples with misery: How can anyone be, like, so mean?

She’s not a bad sort, really, if your taste in heroines runs toward the weepy, but her presence in American movie theaters raises an obvious question: What have they done with Bridget Jones?

In the 1998 bestseller “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” the thirtysomething heroine could be confused and vulnerable. But, on her good days, she was a lioness who roared through the savanna of single life. When her date suggested physical intimacy without emotional intimacy, she (verbally) tossed him across the room.

Alas, the lioness is nowhere in sight in the long-awaited Bridget Jones movie, which opened last Friday.

Declawed and defanged to the point where she is merely adorable--and lobotomized to boot, if the El Nino line is any indication--Screen Adaptation Bridget limps through life like a lost kitten.

New Literary Genre Reflects the ‘90s Woman

This is particularly disappointing because the Bridget book, which chronicled a London single’s madcap search for love, inner peace and a really good weight-loss plan, wasn’t just first-rate entertainment. It was part of a quiet revolution in women’s fiction: During the 1990s, authors like “Sex and the City” scribe Candace Bushnell and Melissa Bank, who wrote “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing,” were reinterpreting ‘70s feminism to reflect the lives of ‘90s women.

The stoic superwomen of the past were replaced by heroines who embraced the old ideals of equality and sisterhood, but expanded the definition of liberation to include the freedom to wear lipstick, admit insecurity, even dream of marriage.

This is part of what the professors call post-feminism and the Web sites call Grrrl Power, and Bridget was one of its boldest experiments.

In her pure form, she would have made a landmark Hollywood romantic heroine: a smart, savvy, single woman who made feminism look fun.

But pure Bridget is not what we see on the screen. In preparation for their close-ups, Bridget, her sex-bomb mother and her feminist pal Sharon have been softened, silenced, dumbed down and cleaned up.

Take the scene in the movie in which Bridget, played by Renee Zellweger, practices for a cocktail party by painstakingly repeating, “Isn’t it terrible about Chechnya?” Most of us know second-graders who could deliver that line in their sleep.

In the book, the international issue is the mind-blowingly complex ethnic strife in Bosnia and the joke is that, in humbly quizzing her condescending boyfriend, Bridget (a) reveals her own considerable knowledge on the topic, and (b) exposes the ignorance of the aforementioned smirking boyfriend.

In the movie, Bridget lands a job after telling her new boss that she had an affair with her old boss. The joke isn’t as bad as it sounds, but it undermines any remaining confidence we had in Bridget’s (professional) abilities.

In the book, the subject matter is similar but the joke is entirely different. Bridget is ushered into a conference room where her interviewer, the producer of a tabloid TV show called “Good Afternoon,” is in the midst of a meeting. He stops quizzing his staff about a risque story idea involving Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley long enough to shout, “You. You must be Bridget!

“How does a man with a beautiful girlfriend manage to sleep with a prostitute, get found out and get away with it? Well? Well? Come on, say something.”

“Well, maybe it was because somebody swallowed the evidence.”

There’s a deadly silence and then the producer laughs until tears come to his eyes.

“Bridget Jones,” he says, “welcome to ‘Good Afternoon!’ ”

Such details may be small, but they add up to a seismic shift in the heroine’s personality.

Why would filmmakers prefer a kitten to a lion? The aggressive make-overs bestowed upon Bridget’s pal Sharon may provide a clue. In the book, Sharon--Shazzer to her friends--is a no-holds-barred, both-guns-blazin’ feminist. That’s her superpower: With a single virulently antimale rant, Sharon can make a broken heart start to feel like a stubbed toe.

Unfortunately, Book Sharon appears to have been kidnapped by the same scoundrels who absconded with Bridget. We know this because Screen Sharon’s role has basically been reduced to one word: a common profanity that she repeats at every opportunity.

Bridget’s mom, another fine example of Grrrl Power, has suffered a similar fate. The joke in the book is that while Bridget flounders romantically, her mom, at about 60, has blossomed into a suburban sex goddess, pursued by a passionate Portuguese tour operator, smitten officers of the law and last but not least, Bridget’s father.

In the movie, the dashing tour operator has been reduced to a tacky shopping network announcer. The love goddess becomes a sheltered homemaker who runs home, shaken, after a bruising foray into the real world.

It’s hard not to conclude that there has been a concerted effort to remove the threatening or potentially controversial elements of the Bridget Jones story, to make a date movie as opposed to a chick movie.

And, commercially speaking, that’s probably a good strategy. Women will see this movie anyway. There are so few romantic comedies out there, and fewer still that are any good at all, that the palest shadow of a Bridget will be a cause for celebration.

Real Women Impressed to See One of Their Own

At a Chicago sneak preview, women embraced almost every aspect of the movie. Many were impressed that Zellweger gained weight for the role, for which she sported what looked like genuine flab on her arms.

“Part of what I loved the most was how they styled her and dressed her to look so absolutely normal,” said Brandon Hansen, 34, an actress and producer.

These are virtues indeed. But it’s hard not to imagine what might have been.

At a time when women are searching for new ways to define strength and success, the original girl with the diary was part Marilyn Monroe, part Margaret Thatcher. She was a Jane Austen buff who wore pink plastic mules, a self-described feminist who spoke honestly about her fear that she would die alone and be found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.

Sure, she was controversial, confusing, a tough sell in a world of couples.

But that was part of the package--and part of the point.

That was Bridget.