Bridget is back!

She has only been with Darcy for six weeks, four days and seven hours, or, according to Bridget Mean Time, 71 shags, before she starts to worry about the answer. As Darcy, Colin Firth is perfect as the too-perfect gentleman - and difficult for Bridget to love. Supremely tolerant, supremely repressed and not a little stuck-up, he is the perfect upper-class Tory foil to Bridget's barely repressed middle-class libertine.

She ends up dumping him not just because she suspects he might be having an affair (of course he's not) but because he folds his underpants. She thinks this could be because he went to Eton, "a fascist institution where they stick a poker up your arse that you're not allowed to remove for the rest of your life".

In steps her old boss and Darcy's old enemy Daniel Cleaver, in what is perhaps Hugh Grant's finest performance to date. When the two men eventually clash over Bridget's honour, the film is at its funniest.

Grant has built his career on playing two roles: the hapless twit and the heartless cad. Both come so naturally one often wonders if he is acting at all.

In his reprise of the despicable Cleaver, a combination of his two standards, Grant excels himself. His ravaged, just-gay-enough bastard in aviators is, realises Shazza, "a dysfunctional f*****-up middle-aged lost boy".

And he steals the film. Cleaver is back in Bridget's life because he now works for Sit Up Britain, presenting a culture guide for people who cannot be bothered with culture. His take on Rome? "When in Rome, do as many Romans as you can." And New York?

"The City That Never Sleeps - with the same person more than two nights running." Classy guy.

He even savages that master of savagery Jeremy Paxman, branding the Newsnight presenter a "tosser" in a brilliant cameo scene far funnier than Salman Rushdie's in the first film.

Jim Broadbent is teddy-bear sweet as Bridget's dad, but the real discovery of The Edge Of Reason is Jacinda Barrett, the Australian-born actress who plays Darcy's colleague Rebecca.

Bridget is madly jealous of Rebecca because "she's got legs up to here and her parents own half of Scotland", and harbours dark suspicions that this Amazonian vision plans a Darcy takeover bid. As we eventually learn, her intentions are entirely different.

Barrett has the kind of glowing beauty that we have seen in young British actress Keira Knightley: if anything she is even more stunning.

To detail Bridget's adventures too much would ruin them for everyone. They are not, however, always easy watching.

In the depths of her despond, after dumping Darcy for frankly pathetic reasons, a sneaking suspicion dawns that perhaps all she really deserves is what she fears most: a life of lonely nights on the sofa with a tub of ice cream, and a spinster's grave. But this is a romantic comedy, not real life.

As the credits come close to rolling and Bridget nears that happy ending, she gives up the fags at last. Then she makes another resolution: "Bridget Jones has cocked things up for the last time."