Plot

Bridget Jones is determined to improve herself while she looks for love in a year in which she keeps a personal diary.

Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her many imperfections. As a New Year's Resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget's band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance into whom Bridget cannot seem to stop running or help finding quietly attractive.—Anuja Varghese <anujav@excite.com>

Can a single woman over thirty, who smokes too much, drinks too much, and has a tendency to say whatever comes into her mind, find her place in the world, and a man? Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is an assistant at a London book publisher, feeling time pass her by. When Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), her boss, starts flirting with her in a vulgar way, she plunges straight in. An affair ensues and she's heals over head. She also keeps running into Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a reserved even stiff barrister who has known her since she was a child young enough to frolic naked in his wading pool, seems to look down his nose at her, and hates Cleaver (truth is, Daniel may be a bit of a bounder). What are Bridget's choices?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is thirty-two-years-old and can't seem to find the right man. Her mother keeps setting her up with dorks. She and her boss have a sexual attraction, but his character seems less than admirable. She resolves to try harder.

Bridget Jones' (Renée Zellweger's) life couldn't get worse. She slept with her boss, is gaining weight, and keeps screwing up in public events. Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) doesn't make it any better, he seems to be everywhere. The stiff top notch lawyer which Bridget can't help, but finds very sexy. From bunny tails, to drunk fits, Bridget seems to be living her life with much "inner poise".—XPhantomX

Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is frustrated; she is in her early thirties, still single, very accident prone and worried about her weight. She works in publicity at a book publishing company in London where her main focus is fantasizing about her boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).

At a New Year party hosted by her parents, she re-meets Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), the barrister son of her parents' friends. They had known each other as children. After their initial encounter, Mark thinks that Bridget is a fool and Bridget thinks that he is arrogant and rude, this not being helped by his jumper with a huge reindeer. Bridget overhears Mark grumble to his mother about her attempt to set him up with "a verbally incontinent spinster who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, and dresses like her mother," After a day beset by a series of mishaps, she misplaced her purse, broke her coffee mug and got stuck in a lift. When she returns home that evening, her shopping bags split. She reached to pull the curtains, only for them to fall off the wall; the was the final straw of a stressful day. When she catches sight of her svelte reflection in the window, she decided to turn her life around. She begins keeping a diary to chronicle her attempts to stop smoking, stop drinking, lose weight, and find her Mr. Right.

Bridget and Daniel begin to flirt heavily at work, first over e-mail. After a book launch, they start a relationship, despite the fact that he is a notorious womanizer with a questionable personality, of which Bridget is aware, from when stating earlier that she will not form relationships with alcoholics, workaholics, peeping-toms, megalomaniacs, emotional F**Kwits or perverts. Bridget learns from Daniel that he and Mark have a history and as a result, hate each other. Daniel informs Bridget of their fallout, telling her that Mark broke their friendship by sleeping with his fiance. Bridget and Daniel start dating. At an important book launch, Bridget bumps into Mark and his glamorous and haughty colleague Natasha (Embeth Davidtz)

Bridget is invited to a family party, originally a "Tarts & Vicars" costume party, so she ties it into a mini-break weekend with Daniel. They spend the day before the party at a country inn where Mark and Natasha are also staying. The morning of the party, Daniel says he must return to London for work and leaves Bridget dressed as a Playboy bunny to endure the party alone. Bridget is horrified to discover the theme of the party has been canceled and she's the only one attending in costume. When she returns to London and drops in on Daniel, she discovers his American colleague, Lara (Lisa Barbuscia), naked in his flat. Bridget cuts ties with him and immediately searches for a new career. She lands a new job in television, and when Daniel pleads with her to stay, she declares that she would "rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's a**e."

Bridget finds a new job in television. She and Mark have run-ins at a bed-and-breakfast and at a mutual friend's dinner party. During the party, Mark, who has come to the dinner with his colleague, Natasha, privately confesses to Bridget that, despite Bridget's faults, he likes her "just the way she is". Mark later helps Bridget to land a major interview for work, her quirky approach prompting the classic comment "Bridget Jones - already a legend".

She begins to develop feelings for Mark. Bridget misguidedly (and somewhat disastrously) attempts to cook her own birthday party dinner, Mark comes to her rescue. After a happy dinner celebration with Bridget's friends and Mark, a drunken Daniel arrives and temporarily monopolizes Bridget's attention.

Mark originally leaves the party but comes back to face Daniel. Mark punches Daniel and the two fight, which moves into a nearby restaurant where Mark and Daniel smash through the window, landing on the street. Mark wins the battle and knocks Daniel out. Bridget chides Mark, but afterwards, after an insensitive appeal by Daniel, she says emphatically that she doesn't want to be with him.

Bridget learns the truth about Mark and Daniel's fallout after her mother lets it out in conversation - that it was actually Daniel that had seduced Mark's wife. ("It was the other way round - my wife, my heart"). At a dinner party the same day, Bridget confesses her feelings for Mark, only to find out that he and Natasha are both leaving to accept jobs in New York. According to Mark's father Mark and Natasha are on the verge of an engagement. Bridget interrupts the toast to their pending engagement with a halting but moving speech about England losing one of its finest, which clearly has an effect on Mark, as he realizes her real meaning, but he still flies to New York, though with obvious misgivings. Just as Bridget starts to embark on a trip to Paris with her friends to mend her broken heart, Mark returns to stay with Bridget.

As they're about to kiss for the first time, Bridget exits to her bedroom to change her undergarments, remarking that it is "an occasion for genuinely tiny knickers." While Bridget is changing, Mark peeks at her diary, in which she has written many insults about him. Bridget returns to find that he has left. Realizing that he had read her diary and that she might potentially lose him again, Bridget runs outside after him in a thin sweater and leopard skin-print underwear. Unable to find him and disheartened, she is about to return home when Mark appears holding a new diary, "to make a fresh start". They kiss in the snow-covered streets.