Good book, bad film? Day #3

Book: Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Film: Bridget Jones’s Diary, directed by Sharon Maguire

You’d have thought Helen Fielding’s sharp, knowing, laugh-out-loud funny writing would be a gift to any screenwriter. Shame, then, that the people who adapted Bridget Jones’s Diary into a film decided to blunt the edges of the dialogue and ramp up the slapstick. (Not to mention giving poor old Colin Firth the worst pre-kiss line since Andie MacDowell simpered ‘Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed’ at the end of Four Weddings.)

The end result’s a movie that’s about as funny as being dumped for someone younger and thinner than you, and as subtle as an ample bottom zooming down a fireman’s pole.