YMMV / Bridget Jones

• Adorkable: Bridget of course, especially in the first film. Her drunken karaoke at the office Christmas party, her embarrassing herself at the book launch, and running out while wearing nothing but a sweater and panties to catch Mark in a snowstorm...all of them make her utterly adorable.
• Americans Hate Tingle: The second film got middling reviews in the U.K. and most of Europe, but still did very well at the box-office. Not so much in the U.S., where it got downright awful reviews and made barely half of what the first film did. To a lesser extent this applied to the third film as well; the reaction from U.S. critics was only slightly less positive than their U.K. counterparts, but its marketing failed to renew American interest in the series, and it quickly sank without trace, flopping with only a fraction of the first film's American box office gains.
• Broken Base: Some fans loved the second film, others hated it. The same could be said for the 3rd book, with the reveal that Mark Darcy is dead.
• Common Knowledge: Bridget Jones is an overweight, whiny Straw Loser according to pop culture. Except, she starts out with a very prestigious job in publishing and only embarrasses herself in a couple of social situations. She also only leaves said job because of Daniel cheating on her, and gets another one in television very quickly with literally no experience. As for her weight, she still weighs under the average for a UK woman (11 stone at the time of publishing) and is repeatedly told she is far too hard on herself.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A portion of the fanbase pretends that the third book just doesn't exist precisely because Mark is dead. Wisely, the third film chooses to ignore the third book and instead adapted the plotline from the newspaper columns.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Bridget gets humiliated when she turns up to the party dressed as a Playboy Bunny. But it's still Renee Zellweger in a sexy costume with YouTube comments gushing over her added curves being accentuated by the suit. On that note, many people have talked about how how lovely Renee looked with the extra weight giving her a larger bustline, hips, and more curves and lamented Hollywood Thin standard for having her drop the weight so quickly.
• First Installment Wins: As several examples on this page point out, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who prefers the second or third film over the first.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the beginning of the novel, Pam mentions to Bridget about a family friend's daughter Julie having a "super dooper job" at the large Arthur Anderson firm; a few years later, it was found guilty of criminal practices involving the auditing of Enron.
  • Bridget practicing to sound sophisticated and well-informed ("Isn't it terrible about Chechnya?") strikes a lot harder in the 2010s when it turned out that gay men were being persecuted and hunted down by the local Chechen government.
  • It's just lucky that Bridget married Mark at the end of BJB and was likely moving out of her apartment, where the Borough Market was. Alas all the series' scenes in Borough Market become this after the 2017 terrorist attack in the area.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Jacinda Barrett's portrayal of Rebecca Gillies isn't very revolutionary in LGBT representation in Cinema, but it seemed to be a big welcome to any questioning young people to see a positive portrayal of an LGBT person coming out. It gets even more heartwarming with projects like the It Gets Better Project years after the film came out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • That's Moaning Myrtle crying in a bathroom in her first scene. To continue with the Harry Potter theme, there's also Professor Slughorn and Madam Pomfrey being married. The third film also has Professor Trelawney as Bridget's doctor.
  • It's hard to believe how bitchy Miss Honey is to Bridget.
  • This isn't the only time Rebecca Pryce had to deal with her man checking out curvy girls, bunny girls, or both.
  • Mark and Colin are father and son?
  • Continuing with the Pride & Prejudice comparisons, Sally Phillips (Bridget's friend Shazza) would play Mrs Bennett in the film version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
  • In the novels, Bridget deals with a woman named Rebecca who goes out of her way to poke at Bridget's insecurities about her appearance and possesses coveted shiny hair, and Rebecca would later try and nearly succeed at seducing Mark Darcy away from Bridget. Flash-forward 20 years later and we have Beyoncé making a record about her husband's infidelities with a "Becky with the good hair".
• Hollywood Homely: There have been some film reviews regarding Renée Zellweger's weight gain for the role, assuming that Bridget was meant to be less attractive rather than just a regular person, there was a particularly egregious article mentioning her and a few questionable examples of stars "getting hideous to play regular people" and one People magazine article about the third book referred to her as "frumpy", of course most viewers and readers would disagree with such an assessment (by Hollywood and Vogue types) that a fuller Renee would have trouble finding someone that likes her. As most British people would call this "total bollocks", it classes as an example of Values Dissonance.^note A problem for a British-set film dealing with a very British source novel, trying to be true to the source and setting but aware it needs to sell in the USA. A meta example being that someone said that Rachel Weisz is too beautiful for the role.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Even when playing "pudgy" Bridget, Zellweger never really looks as plump as the book character would lead you to believe she is. The third film avoids this entirely by not having Zellweger gain weight, handwaved as her finally reaching her dream weight. (Notably, when she got down to her ideal weight in the books, her friends commented that she looked ill and unhealthy.)
• Jerkass Woobie: Daniel can be considered this when he shows total regret for his own actions and is all aware of why his old best friend and old girlfriend/employee want nothing to do with him.
• Moral Event Horizon: In Edge of Reason when Cleaver sees Bridget getting arrested and just looks the other way.
• Narm:
  • To some, the third film's plot with Bridget becoming pregnant can come off as this when Renee Zellweger is 47 years old in it, making her look a tad too old for pregnancy, though Zellweger still played the role so familiarly and endearingly that most viewers and critics could overlook it. She can also pass off as a woman in her earlier forties (as Bridget is in the film), though the film itself doesn't shy away from constantly poking fun at Bridget's age in relation to her pregnancy.
  • In the third film, Jack's dating website, which is supposed to be cutting-edge and sophisticated enough to make him a billionaire, looks so horribly outdated and cheesy that it's unlikely that anyone would seriously consider using it, much less earn Jack so much money in an era where there are dozens of dating sites where using sophisticated algorithms to make potential matches is the rule, not the exception.
• Replacement Scrappy: Hugh Grant turned down reprising his role as Daniel for the third film. Problematic, as the other possible father of Bridget's child is supposed to be Daniel, understandable given the Love Triangle in place for the first two film. The character of Jack was created to fill this gap, and some fans were not happy about the change, accusing Jack of being too bland of a character to seriously consider Bridget pursuing.
• Retroactive Recognition: What's this... Bridget's gay friend is a womanising scientist from the Aerilon colony?
• She Really Can Act: Renee Zellweger's accent is pretty much universally-praised, to the point people were shocked that she isn't actually British.
• Signature Scene: Bridget chasing after Mark in the middle of a snowstorm, in only her underwear, cardigan and her trainers.
• Special Effect Failure: Some of the snowy scenes are less than convincing. Shortly before arriving for the Darcys' Ruby Wedding, a snowy field is clearly one with a white cloth on it. Also, Bridget's breath is not condensing when she is running after Mark in the snow, and she does not even look cold, despite being very minimally dressed.
• Stoic Woobie: Mark, when you consider that his so-called best friend slept with his first wife and that he became this close to settling into another loveless commitment if Bridget hadn't confessed her feelings for him. The 3rd book has Bridget talk about how she and Mark would have pillow talk while he was alive, he confessed to having so much nightmares as a result of his time in boarding school, she said that right there she saw that inside the powerful and eloquent human rights barrister, is the scared little boy he was then.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The third film Bridget Jones' Baby received far better reviews than Edge of Reason did.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: As pointed out on The Villain Was Right podcast after talking about his interactions with Bridget and Natasha, Mark Darcy can come off as this when it comes to his relationships with women imploding, nevermind that much of it is self-inflicted due to his Stiff Upper Lip style not permitting him to be vulnerable with Bridget, during his and Bridget's engagement he would leave her alone due to his workaholic tendencies and even brought his work colleagues to Bridget's flat with no notice, he abandoned his fiancée Natasha at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, instead of putting the brakes on his relationship with Natasha and telling her he isn't interested he keeps seeing her, and after his relationship with Bridget ended he marries another woman while pining away for his previous fiancee. Given these traits, it's no wonder his first marriage ended the way it did.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Bridget's mum brings a Masai tribesman back when she goes on holiday to Africa. She nicknames him 'Wellington' because she can't pronounce his name. Bridget is, of course, aghast.
  • A similar incident occurs (in the book, anyway) when Bridget's mother Handwaves the possible reasons for Mark's ex-wife's adultery: "Well, of course, she was Japanese. A very cruel race..."^note An attitude like that is perfectly correct for a character of that age; British people of the WW2 or immediately post WW2 generations do not tend to like the Japanese. They merely distrust Germans; a generation that saw what the Japanese did to prisoners of war and how they chose to fight a war means that the Japanese are utterly, totally, loathed. Bridget's mother is typical of this older generation of Brits.
  • An In-Universe Cultural example has the second film showing Bridget and Mark going to functions involving his work, they wouldn't sit next to one another and many American viewers would fault him for leaving Bridget alone to cope with being the only person who isn't a lawyer at the table without her boyfriend seated next to her. British Seating Etiquette doesn't allow for Mark and Bridget to sit next to one another or across since they're just dating.
  • In Real Life, the gulf between British and American perceptions as to what constitutes "fat" and "attractive" in terms of female beauty (see Hollywood Homely, above) - British audiences had no problems with Zellweger putting weight on for the film and tended to consider her usual weight as being far too thin for her to be attractive. Americans tended to conclude the opposite ^note  Not across the board, many Americans esp. those outside of Hollywood, like in Ethnic communities or "white-bread" Middle America would consider her attractive, even a pre-Christina Hendricks sort of old Hollywood attractiveness .
  • Bridget gets groped a lot, by her boss and from her Creepy Uncle Geoffrey and gets blatantly stared at by Mr. Fitzherbert, so much so that she calls him "Tits Pervert", and for the most part she pretty much just silently takes it or treats it as a tiresome nuisance instead of the harassment it actually is.
  • The 3rd film has been considered a betrayal of the Millennial fans who grew up watching the first two movies as teenagers and be right-leaning and anti-feminist while bashing said generation of young women.
• The Woobie:
  • Jude and Bridget's parents can function as this. But there is something sad about Bridget being shocked that there is a man that likes/loves her the way she is and she clearly entered this trope even before she started lip-synching to "All By Myself."
  • If Bridget's self doubts and insecurities didn't make her this trope, then she entered into this trope in the third book when she reminiscences about Mark as a widow.
  • The first two books have Bridget's married friend Magda dealing with her husband seeing other women and one scene has Magda advice Bridget to enjoy being single while she still can.
  • After finally marrying Vile Richard in the end of the 2nd book, the 3rd book reveals that he left Jude after a few months of marriage.
  • In the original script, there are cutaway scenes where there is a glimpse into Bridget's friends and their own relatives, with Tom being closeted around his family who assumes Bridget is his girlfriend.
  • Shazza has the utter look of helplessness when Bridget is caught as a drug mule, only to later find out that the guy she was friendly with was using her as a potential mule and that only her overstuffed bag prevented her from carrying the drugs, and looks really chastened and shaky when she sees Bridget again.
  • Rebecca counts as this trope when you consider she has been infatuated with her colleague's girlfriend and may have been in the closet somewhat.