By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
“Bridget Jones’s Baby,” the long-awaited third installment, begins as charmingly awkward, accident-prone Bridget (Renee Zellweger) is celebrating her 43rd birthday – alone, once again – with Celine Dion’s “All By Myself.”
A funeral flashback reveals that Bridget’s caddish boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), has died and her longtime lover, successful barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), is married to a woman named Camilla.
Bridget is a successful TV news show producer and her best friend, anchorwoman Miranda (Sarah Solemani), has concocted a plan to launch her back into the dating world during a weekend at the Glastonbury Music Festival.
That’s where American billionaire Jack Quant (Patrick Dempsey) gallantly pulls her out of a mud puddle. He’s CEO of an online dating website. Later that night, he and Bridget hook up in his ornate yurt.
A week later, at a christening, Bridget discovers that Mark Darcy is getting a divorce, and their nostalgic chemistry re-ignites.
As a result of these two romantic encounters, Bridget’s pregnant. But who’s the father? Since Bridget’s terrified of having amniocentesis, not even her obstetrician (Emma Thompson) knows, cynically quipping, “It doesn’t matter. All they’re good for is fitting car seats and blaming things on.”
Both suitors are surprisingly acquiescent to claiming parenthood. Indeed, they soon become competitive. And when her water breaks, both men rush her to the hospital, defying a traffic jam by carrying her crosstown through the streets of London.
Filled with characters adapted from her own best-selling novel, the script by author Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson, again directed by Sharon Maguire, reflects a changing cultural climate, particularly about gender equality. As a result, while still insecure, Bridget is less body image-obsessed.
The same can be said for Renee Zellweger, who took a six-year break from acting, living on a 40-acre farm in Connecticut. Middle-aged Bridget’s gamely grappling with feeling increasing irrelevant in a workplace populated by people decades younger obviously touched a chord within Zellweger.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bridget Jones’s Baby” delivers an endearing 8, a sparky screwball comedy worth waiting for.
Evoking memories of “Raging Bull” (1980), Robert De Niro returns to the boxing ring again in “Hands of Stone” as Ray Arcel, the legendary trainer who coached welterweight boxer Roberto Duran in the 1970s.
As an impoverished 16 year-old from Panama, Roberto Duran (Edgar Ramirez) made his professional debut in 1968 and retired in 2002 at the age of 50. But his story begins at Madison Square Garden in 1971, when Arcel first saw Duran fight.
“Ring sense is an art,” Arcel says. “A gift from God that flows out of a fighter like a painting that flows out of an artist.”
Obviously, Arcel felt that Doran was bestowed with that blessing and had great potential, if he could master the strategy. His nickname was Manos de Piedra (“Hands of Stone’). Problem is: Duran is indulgent, undisciplined and self-defeating.
In June, 1980, Duran defeated cocky Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond) to claim the WBC welterweight title. In their subsequent November rematch, he stunned the boxing world during the eighth round by returning to his corner and forfeiting, allegedly saying the words “no mas” (no more).
Duran’s bizarre behavior is then explained by his supposed PTSD, traced back to abandonment by his American father.
Venezuelan writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz crafts a fragmented, often incongruous, “rags-to-riches” biographical narrative, which superficially includes Duran’s courtship of his impressionable, schoolgirl wife (Ana de Armas) and the births of their five children.
While soft-spoken Robert De Niro is effective and Venezuelan-born Edgar Ramirez has his charismatic moments, the overall effect is ennui because Jakubowicz’s concept lacks focus with too many underdeveloped subplots
On the Granger Gauge, “Hands of Stone” is a fumbling, formulaic 5, despite the fancy footwork.
In “War Dogs,” director Todd Phillips brings the same raucous sensibility that characterized his “Hangover” trilogy. It’s a supposedly ‘true story’ about how a couple of dorky Florida stoners became international arms dealers.
When 22 year-old David Packouz (Miles Teller) ran into his old Hebrew-school chum, Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill), Packouz was feeling adrift, doing massage therapy and selling high-thread-count bedsheets to retirement homes – to the chagrin of his long-suffering girlfriend (Ana de Armas).
When brash, obnoxious Diveroli relates how he’s devised a scam to lowball government contracts, Packouz decides to join him. It seems that after the U.S. government under Dick Chaney was charged with cronyism with Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and large other corporations, smaller bidders were solicited to supply munitions.
That’s how these two idiotic dudes become weapons contractors for the Pentagon, despite their personal disdain for President George W. Bush and America’s involvement in the Iraq War, explaining: “It’s not about being pro-war; it’s about being pro-money.”
Starting small, they perfect their hustling – which leads them on a trip to Jordan, where they cross 500 miles of dangerous desert from Amman to Baghdad to deliver a truckload of Italian-made Berretas.
Bradley Cooper appears as sleazy Harry Girard, whom they meet at an Ammo Expo in Las Vegas, which Diveroli describes as “Comic-Con with grenades.” That encounter eventually takes them to an Albanian warehouse filled with 93 million rounds of AK-47 ammo whose origins are questionable.
Based on Guy Lawson’s 2011 Rolling Stone article, it’s a satirical buddy comedy – with lots of ‘chapter’ breaks and without much success.
On the Granger Gauge, “War Dogs” is a flaccid 5, only fitfully funny.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
