In 2001, Bridget Jones’s Diary (man, that apostrophe still
irks me somewhat; I don’t care about grammatical accuracy, that just looks
wrong) served as a major paradigm shift for how rom-coms were realized and set
a standard for how they would look for the rest of the 2000’s and even today.
With its firmly tongue-in-cheek sense of humour and old-school literary
influences, it was the exception to the rule that itself became the rule, bringing a far more irresponsible and
mutton-acting-as-lamb recklessness to the status quo. Then the sequel came
along and, by sticking to auto-pilot on all counts, was thoroughly annoying and
a major let-down. Now we have a long-awaited(?) follow-up to the story that may
or may not retcon said sequel The Edge Of Reason out of existence, but as
always the Sequel Rules still apply. Rule #6 goes that threequels made 10+
years after the fact have a high probability of being either the best or worst
of their respective series (see: Toy Story 3, Terminator 3). So, with all that
in mind, how does this go?
