"Bridget Jones's Baby" is the light-hearted tale of London's very own heartbreaker Bridget Jones and her struggle to figure out how to be a mother. The movie starts off with Bridget (played by Renee Zellweger) turning 43, and feeling like she hasn't accomplished much. The tale takes a big spin when she has two one night stands: one at a music festival with dreamy American Jack (played by McDreamy himself Patrick Dempsey), and one at her godchild's christening with the one that got away, Mark Darcy (played by Colin Firth).
When Bridget discovers she's pregnant, she has a difficult time trying to figure out who the father of her child is. She even goes to the extreme of booking two doctor's appointments to ensure her two fathers do not meet. When they do, it's not only a fight to be the child's father, but it is also a fight for Bridget's heart with Jack even lying to Mark and saying he is the father just to make sure he isolates himself from Bridget.
In the end we learn that Jack is the father, but Bridget decides she doesn't want to be with him. In fact, she figures out that the one person she would want to have a family with is Mark. Mark and Bridget end up getting married, and she's carrying her blooming baby boy in her arm, her life finally in place.
For me, this movie was more than just another Bridget Jones movie. In fact, I'd never seen a Bridget Jones movie until then. I laughed, I cried. What I enjoyed the most was how down-to-earth Bridget was. She made her own mistakes and would get out of them in the strangest of ways. For example, she books one of her potential baby daddies, Jack, on her friend's talk show. When he's there, she gets her friend to ask him a bunch of questions that were a little TMI to try and figure out if he was the father. Scenes like those made everyone feel like Bridget was one of their own best friends, or maybe even themselves.
My experience was probably one that will stay with me forever. But it wasn't about the love antics she gets into or the handsome men trying to woo her heart — it was her struggle to become a mother.
I had two favorite scenes — the one where she promises the child in her womb that she would have it all together before he or she was born and the scene when she loses her job and has no food at home. As she goes to withdraw money from the ATM, she forgets her PIN number and is ready to leave, walking away without her purse. Just as anyone who knows Bridget's rotten luck, the doors close and lock, leaving her without her purse and without another way into the bank. And of course it begins to rain. Locked out of her apartment, she's forced to stay outside. Yet, amidst all of these unfortunate occurrences, she doesn't lose sight of what really matters. She looks down to her stomach and apologizes to her child, and admits she won't be able to have it all together before he or she is born. What gets to me about these two scenes is that mothers never really have it together. They just try their best to make sure that their children can be happier than them, that they feel loved, and that they can be okay. A child is a mother's pride and joy; in fact, there's nothing more that a mother could want in this world.
Mothers work day in and day out to make sure that there's a roof over their children's heads, clothes on their backs, that they have what they need and what they want. For a mother, it doesn't matter if they don't have it all together. All that matters is that they can keep their child safe. Bridget was trying her hardest to give her son the best life possible, but she struggled. Mothers will struggle because like us, they're human. They will make mistakes along the way, and all we can do is forgive them. They will make us angry, but we must let it go. There's nobody that fights for us as much as mothers do, there's nobody that cares for us as much as they do, there's nobody that we can depend on more than them.
"Bridget Jones's Baby" is more than just a romantic comedy. It's a tear-jerker that reminds us that moms are the best gift God could give us on this planet.
