Bridget Jones Diary (Collector's Edition)

There are plenty of great reviews for this already, so I'll confine mine to a point some perhaps will think is minor.

This is one of my favourite movies, I've seen it countless times and used to own it back in Australia. I finally purchased a copy, this "collector's edition" which is really just a fancy cardboard cover over the regular disk as far as I'm concerned, and watched it last night.

I shouldn't have been surprised at the few edits I spotted, yet I was, and disappointed. The minor ones were that a few words had been changed, which seemed a bit patronising, "dumbed-down" even - the first reference to a gherkin (in her voice-over as she arrives at her parent's house) has been changed to "pickle", and later "eaten by Alsatians" has been changed to "eaten by dogs" (for anyone who doesn't know, "Alsatian" is the other name for a German Shepard - one name is considered politically incorrect, I forget which one). Considering all the other "Brittishisms" in the movie, I don't see the point of changing these two words.

That I could easily forgive, if it weren't for the change to the end credits. The orginal has some mini-interviews sprinkled throughout the credits that are absolutely hilarious, including one with Darcy's parents in which his dad says he likes a girl with a big bum that you can "rest your pint on" and "park your bike between" (ok, I get that that might offend some people, but I think what characters in, say, Hollywood action movies say is worse, and often more offensive), and another in which Daniel, in a bar, says how happy he is for Bridget and it's ok cause he's met someone too, though he can't get her name right and she is in fact a transvestite (it was his fear, as expressed earlier in the movie, that he end up lonely in a bar).

When I first saw this movie in the cinema, the audience could not stop laughing during the end credits, and it remained one of my favourite bits. In the North American version it's been replaced with a sappy "home movie" of Bridget and Darcy as kids at Darcy's birthday party and oh, look, they're holding hands, isn't that cute. Frankly, no, it's not, and it doesn't fit the rest of the movie, which isn't at all cute, it doesn't match at all. Hence the four stars, when really it deserves 5.

If you like your British humour straight up, and enjoyed the other politically incorrect comments sprinkled liberally throughout the movie, then try to get a hold of the original version. The differences are minor but it's worth it for the alternate end credits. While it is common practice for there to be "American" versions of classic British TV shows (Red Dwarf, Ab Fab, The Office), movies are usually safe from the editing room. I just hope nothing's been changed on the Blackadder DVD I just ordered...

When I received the copy of this movie, I was a bit surprised to see that as a collector's edition, it there were no extras in the case. Then the movie itself looks like it was made in someone's basement. Was it? The graphics in the menu look like they were created NOT by a studio and I was able to watch the movie ONCE and now, today, I went to watch it again and I can't get past chapter 17 in the movie. I looked for a name of someone I could complain to, but can't find it anywhere, so I am forced to write it here.

I'm not happy...and will be very careful ordering a movie from here again.

This movie is good for a rainy day when you want to watch something fairly mindless. Rene Z. comes across as an American pretending to be British but Colin Firth and Hugh Grant are true to form and in my opinion carry the movie.