BRIDGET JONES’S BABY
Director: Sharon Mcguire
Cert 15; 123 minutes

This 21st-century ‘truism’ (with apologies to Jane Austen) is just one of the many sugarcoated lies loaded into this film which, even apart from the continual foul language, cannot be recommended in any way.

Why do Christians need to know about it? The answer is because it is films like this which have been pumping ‘entertaining’ poison into the bloodstream of Western culture for the last 20 years and which parents, youth leaders and pastors need to explicitly address and oppose for the good of the rising generation.

Humour makes acceptable?

The film, of course, takes for granted that sex divorced from marriage is a good thing. So the plot begins as lonely Bridget sleeps with two men within days of each other and gets pregnant with no idea of who the father is. Abortion is considered but rejected, purely because at 43 years old this might be Bridget’s last opportunity to be a mother. The film denigrates women, as the ‘heroine’ is the walking epitome of neediness mixed with an ‘it’s all about me’ cunning and with very little common sense or backbone of her own. As the story unfolds in all its dreadful superficiality, all kinds of immorality and self-centredness are embraced, made humourous and chic and therefore ‘acceptable’. But perhaps the greatest lie of all is that, despite entrenched fecklessness and flamboyant promiscuity, it all turns out okay in the end, as Bridget marries the love of her life. Wake up. Real life just isn’t like that.

But, imagining that they too are like Bridget, living some kind of charmed life as an undiscovered celebrity, many young people will see this movie and be given yet more momentum to go the way of the world that leads to destruction. Pure Hollywood?