‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ Has Managed To Become More Relevant With Time

As a new Bridget Jones movie hits theaters this week, I’m guessing we are awash with bittersweet feelings, yes? Hooray, our old pal is back! But oh no, will it be as good to see her as we hope it will be?
You see, the “sweet” part comes from Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the “bitter” comes from Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason — a fine film, one that certainly has its moments. Its real, major flaw is that it had to compete with, and be compared to, the masterpiece that is Bridget Jones’s Diary. So in anticipation of Bridget Jones’s Baby, it’s worth taking a look back at Bridget Jones’s Diary, and understanding why the romantic comedy is even more relevant today than it was 15 years ago when it was released.

Ah, Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger). A perpetually single gal just trying to get by. You see, the key to Bridget is that she is all of us. Every single one of us, whether we are single or married or otherwise. But mostly the single part. Bridget Jones’s Diary tells the classic tale of what it’s like to be a modern, working, single woman, asked at every turn “So, how’s your love life?” when all you want to yell is “Nonexistent!” or “It’s complicated!” or “We’re hooking up but I can’t tell how he feels!” or “I’m not really into him but he’s nice I guess but I’m sort of over it!” You must remember that Bridget Jones’s Diary was released before Tinder was ever a dreadful app on our phones. There was no Coffee Meets Bagel, or Bumble, or Happn, or even sliding into DMs on Twitter. Poor Bridget was left to her own devices, without the help of Apple devices. And thank goodness she was.
Because those apps might help a lot of people meet, but more often than not, they remain total distractions. Bridget Jones is pure, she’s a woman in the world, and she’s just looking for a nice dude, not these “emotional fuckwits,” or as we now know them, “fuckbois.” In fact, Bridget Jones’s Diary was so ahead of its time, it featured a character named Perpetua before we simply knew that name as a decent Instagram filter.

Bridget Jones’s Diary is a reminder that, despite apps or social media, being single is all the same. The feelings are all too familiar whether you arrived at them by a swipe or an actual human interaction. Of which, Bridget is not afraid to have! Call her awkward all you want, but she’s not afraid to talk to people in person. She even admits, out loud, “I already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway.” Whoa, that’s like basically a Tweet except in spoken word form.

Which is the reason this film holds up better over time; while the characters don’t have actual smart phones, they still had all the roots to things we have today. Bridget and Daniel (Hugh Grant) exchange sexy emails at work, and we all know how prevalent that remains today, even if it’s in Snapchat form instead. When Daniel tells Bridget in person that he is engaged to another woman, that’s the same thing as discovering that awful piece of information in your Facebook timeline – except maybe harsher! Yet the feeling of being punched directly in the heart remains the same. Bridget is a woman who stays home to watch Fraiser reruns (now streaming on Netflix), and scrape the mold off old cheese (Seamless is here for ya, girl), and uses all her might to squeeze into granny panties (Bridge, let me tell you about a thing called Spanx). She daydreams about her wedding to a guy she thinks she’s in a relationship with until she realizes, nope, she’s definitely not. These days we’re picking out bridesmaids dresses after some dude simply likes one of our pictures on Instagram. At least Bridget got a weekend getaway! Oh, and then there’s that time that Mark (Colin Firth) totally reads Bridget’s diary and she’s afraid he got the wrong idea about her and her feelings for him? Yeah you know it, and its modern day version well, except today we call it “reading someone’s text messages.”
Technological advances have given us even more of what Bridget posses at her core, and that is hope — hope that you’ll find someone you connect with, and someone who likes you “just as you are.” And boy does she ever.
This film made one little slip, and that was trying to convince us that Colin Firth was any less sexy in a Christmas sweater. Nice try, but that one really backfired! Wrapped up in this classic tale of singledom is the even classic-er tale of fuckboi vs. nice guy: how hard it can be to come by this love triangle, and even harder, is the power to make the right decision. Or, and this is the tricky one, how to recover after making a questionable decision. And I’m not even talking about running outside in the snow wearing only your leopard undies.

Which brings us to Bridget Jones’s Baby. Look, I’m as outraged as anyone, maybe even more so, that Hugh Grant is not a part of this film. It means one of two things: a) we can learn from Bridget and get rid of the fuckbois once and for all, or b) even though Bridget is trying to figure out if the baby belongs to Mark or McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey), surprise! —it’s really Daniel’s because life’s biggest lesson is that you can never truly get rid of a fuckboi.
While fuckbois remain the cockroaches of our love lives, there are many other reasons why the Bridget Jones films more than stand the test of time, including the fact that they remain super funny, and entertaining, and honest. There will always be women (and men) who are single, who are dealing with not only their own relationships, but their parents’ relationships as well, who will worry about their weight and their social status, romantic or otherwise, and who will encounter yucky cheating situations, and who will lean on their friends for support, and maybe even those of us who will flash our butts on TV by accident (actually, that’s probably more of a Snapchat thing, too). We’ll make a New Year’s resolution, and we’ll start a diary, even if it’s simply on the Notes app, because sometimes, it turns out, diaries are not full of crap, Bridget.
So let’s welcome Bridget Jones’s Baby, because it’s impossible not to be happy and excited, mostly that they didn’t name it Bridget Jones’s Blog, but to catch up with an old pal, one that it feels like truly understands us. And likes us, just as we are.
[Watch Bridget Jones’s Diary on Amazon Video] *Note: Both Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason will be available on Hulu starting Thursday, September 15th.