The romantic comedy image of Bridget Jones Diary has been superbly marketed. As a brand identity, the term ‘romantic comedy’, despite its vagueness, carries a great commercial potency for distributors and reviewers, as these films have been incredibly popular in Hollywood, and with audiences, over the past two decades (Krutnik, 2002). Bridget Jones Diary is a great example of a romantic comedy, a ‘chickflic’, whose charm is enhanced because of its British appeal, and a sympathetic full-figured heroine with everyday embarrassments, and this led to the production of a sequel.
Hollywood Loves England
From the mid 1990s onwards, the US became more interested in romantic comedies imported from England and Australia. This was a result of the international success of Four weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. Both films featured a big British star (Hugh Grant) and a popular American actress (Andie McDowell and Julia Roberts respectively). “The remarkable success of Notting Hill encouraged Hollywood involvement in such co-productions as Bridget Jones Diary which similarly capitalised upon the exotic appeal of British cultural and scenic milieus” (Krutnik, 2002).
At the end of the trailer of Bridget Jones Diary it is stated that this film is from the makers of Four weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, accentuating the ‘Britishness’ of the film. The producers did not want Bridget Jones’s Diary to be Americanized in any way, despite the fact that Renee Zellweger (who plays Bridget Jones) is American. The loss of Bridget Jones’s British trademark vocabulary, for instance, 'fuckwittage' and 'v.g', would change the whole film, and this had to be avoided at all costs. For fans of the scenic English locations of Bridget Jones Diary, you can find them posted online. Bridget Jones Diary was shot mostly in London, and in the English countryside, including the Cotswold Hills, the stone-built village of Snowshill, London's Holland Park and Notting Hill restaurants (The Observer).
Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason
The film company, Working Title, has seen Bridget Jones Diary shoot to the top of box offices on both sides of the Atlantic. A senior source at Miramax told the press:
We think Americans will go in a big way for Bridget and we could be into a three-part series [...] It's a Hollywood tradition; a good, old idea is usually better than an untested one. If a movie is a blockbuster, or sometimes if it just turns a profit, studio executives usually aim for a sequel.
A sequel was produced: Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason in 2004, also based on a No.1 best-seller by Helen Fielding. Renée Zellweger, was convinced to put on quite a bit of weight the second time around, as she was payed $11 million, instead of $4 million. The budget for the film was also larger, $70 million, and was also a huge success. The metaphorical thirst of women everywhere was quenched by Bridget Jones Diary in 2001, as they were longing to see a rolemodel who was more like them and less like Claudia Schiffer. It seems a logical step, in a marketing perspective, to use the same formula again in 2004: a funny, clumsy woman in a romantic comedy, with the exotic appeal of British culture, how can women resist such film? They could not...
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Krutnik, F.
(2002). Conforming Passions?:Contemporary Romantic Comedy. In S. Neale (Ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: British Film Institute.
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http://hem.passagen.se/lmw/bridget_jones_news.html
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http://www.visitbritain.com
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www.theobserver.com