Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason 2004

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: With her volume knob cranked up to 11 and her cups overflowing with weight gain, Zellweger is often more annoying than adorable. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: It is, I'm afraid, time to retire Bridget Jones. Send her off to Happily-Ever-After Land with her vodka and Silk Cuts and handsome human-rights lawyer and let her get on with her amiable, dizzy, neurotic and now thoroughly annoying life. Read more

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: News flash: Love ain't easy. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There's a flatness in the writing, a slapdash feel to the directing and an over-reliance on what worked the first time. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: It's the sequel to one of the best films of 2001 that quickly reveals itself as one of the big disappointments of 2004. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: The humiliation of Bridget Jones is done so many times that it's not funny and it's not clever and it's not interesting. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The talented cast give the flabby script some much-needed muscle. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is amusing but never groundbreaking. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Uma Thurman and Nicole Kidman might have suffered more thoroughly in recent movies, but no one suffers more thanklessly than Zellweger does here. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: We know she's ridiculous. She knows she's ridiculous. It's just too bad she can't wear it more proudly. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: That this new film isn't quite so adorable as the first hardly matters, Bridgetwise, as the whole point of both movies is to allow everyone to revel in Zellweger's assumed-zaftig pantomime. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The modest charms of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason are a triumph of performance, production, and adaptation over the empty-calorie dither of its source material. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: In an opening scene, Bridget, a London television reporter, sky-dives right into a pig pen. That pretty much sums up the film's attitude toward its heroine. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Another small jewel in the crown of unabashedly commercial, cheerfully middlebrow, eminently exportable British fluff. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: Misbegotten comedy sequels have a way of resembling souring relationships. All those adorable idiosyncrasies that initially melted your heart can curdle into the very irritating habits that send you packing. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: I can't remember many sequels as redundant and unnecessary as this one. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: A sequel that should have been buried six feet under. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: The sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary makes the first movie look like a masterpiece. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Zellweger just shines in this role. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: On those rare occasions when The Edge of Reason isn't regurgitating material from Bridget Jones' Diary, it is taking ill-advised excursions into unfunny slapstick and sappy melodrama. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is a jolly movie and I smiled pretty much all the way through, but it doesn't shift into high with a solid thunk the way Bridget Jones' Diary (2001) did. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: So clumsy and crass that it makes you doubt the pleasure of the first movie. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Philosophers say that those who can't remember the past are doomed to repeat it. If you remember Bridget Jones's Diary fondly, spare yourself this one. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Leah McLaren, Globe and Mail: Her character, a self-deprecating blend of accidental insight and unapologetic girlish emotion, has gone from idiosyncratic to flat-out idiotic. Read more

Christy Lemire, Journal News (Westchester, NY): Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Bridget's is a world of upper middle-class Teflon-coated narcissism, the kind that effectively seals out any concerns other than her own, and those concerns tend to run the gamut from weight to men and back again. Read more

Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Several of the movie's farcical moments feel forced and strained. Read more

Derek Elley, Variety: Though the script tries to replicate the first film's heart-tugging moments, there's a lack of a big emotional arc to tie the episodic structure together. However, on a performance level, the movie is practically flawless. Read more

Jessica Winter, Village Voice: All this unaccountable admiration is bestowed upon the ne plus ultra of the regressive rom-com heroine, a thirtysomething who displays the rudimentary motor functions, raging id, and darling pucker of a cuddly infant. Read more

Teresa Wiltz, Washington Post: It's a pleasing enough romp, and if you're starved for romantic comedy (where have they all gone?) this will ease your hunger pangs. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Fielding, along with co-writers Andrew Davies, Richard Curtis and Adam Brooks, has turned what I can only believe were Bridget's charmingly human imperfections on the page into a lump of schoolgirl-style boy-craziness and corrosive self-loathing. Read more