Cinema: Full-Witted

Renee Zellweger shines in Bridget Jones's Diary

With her ruddy skin, pulpy bosom and self-abasing zinger wit, she's so--well, so very English. One glance at Houston's own Renee Zellweger, and all anxiety about the casting of an American as Britain's favorite wounded bird of the '90s vanishes. (Hey, if Vivien Leigh could play Scarlett O'Hara...) She fits in, and stands out, perfectly. And as the plot of Bridget Jones's Diary ripens, and two handsome men--rapacious Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and dull Mark Darcy (Colin Firth)--tumble vagrantly into her heart, Zellweger reveals, as in a soul's striptease, Bridget's appeal. Inside this "verbally incontinent spinster" (as Darcy calls her), a...

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