Dear Diary: it's not v. good

Oh Bridget, Bridget, Bridget. Why? Why? Why? I was so looking forward to this film. I re-read the book, again. I bought all the glossy magazines with Renée Zellweger on the cover. I got really excited. But, as B would say: It's not much bloody good, is it?

I went to the premiere with two friends. One, a late thirtysomething feminist who hated the column and the two books (on the grounds of being a late thirtysomething feminist, I suppose, although I have never understood this stance; Bridget is stuck in a job that's beneath her because she lacks selfconfidence, and her only real want in life is to be loved, like 99 per cent of women at one point in their lives).

The other friend was a mid-twenties postladette who finds the very notion of weighing herself or pining after a man terribly old-fashioned. And then there was me, right up there with Bridget in the weighing rituals, the man-pursuing and the loneliness.

The first book and film I loved; they were sweet and real and original. And I loved the second book; what happens when you end up with Mr Right and it all goes Horribly Wrong. The second book made me laugh out loud. But the problem, for me and my two still unconverted friends, is that the second film doesn't.

Where it fails, and where it will irritate other Bridget lovers, is that it veers too wildly from the book. There is no lesbian kiss in the book, Daniel Cleaver does not become a TV presenter, nor does he travel with B to Thailand, and there is no skydiving into a pig pen.

This film merely repeats the jokes of the first - the big pants, the bottom on camera, the fight between Mark Darcy and Cleaver - whereas Helen Fielding's sequel took the story on. And, sorry to be so trainspottery, but where is the scene where Bridget interviews the actor Colin Firth? I know he is otherwise engaged playing Darcy, but surely George Clooney could have stood in? And where is her diary? It seems to have been lost along the way, along with Fielding's wit.

There are moments of tenderness in this film, but these come only from Zellweger, who inhabits the character so completely, she manages to evoke her middle-England nuttiness with merely her posture (she reminds me of a younger Margaret Rutherford as she encourages Darcy to buck up), which is just as well as the script is dire.

There is one lovely scene, though, set in the twinkly damp of the South Bank, when B tells Darcy he is "a pompous arse" who folds his underpants and then scampers, penguin-fashion in her too-tight evening frock, alone, to her flat. She treats him mean and, hey presto, he is at the door, begging to be let in. If only life were like that. If only this film had been like the book.

Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason
Cert: 15