Starring: Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent and James Callis
Directed by: Sharon Maguire
Running time: One hour and 34 minutes

Cinematic adaptations are a bit of a curse.

More often than not, people take a masochistic pleasure in going to great length in describing how a book is better than its on-screen transformation, how the screenwriter and director have lost the entire point, how the casting was bad. I myself have indulged in this trashy boasting of competence - I'm still waiting for a film that does justice to The Three Musketeers - I'm sure you have too. Then again, it's so much better when you can speak of an adaptation in words of praise and be able to admit that the authors didn't lose the point. The authors of Bridget Jones's Diary didn't.

Making a good film out of the Helen Fielding cult novel was always going to be a challenge. Consider the following obstacles: the ultra female skew of the story which features mainly "weight-and-age" paranoia, fruitless daydreaming, and a series of existential disasters that could have easily alienated the male chunk of the audience. In addition, the first person narration is a difficult transition to the screen, and the typically British whimsical humour of the book could have been totally incomprehensible in film format. On top of that, the casting of Texas-born Renee Zellweger for the role of Londoner Bridget evoked reactions ranging from raised eyebrows to near hysteria.

The film, however, is a celebration of marching through all these obstacles with aplomb. The female skew is tackled with the presence of Bridget's two love interests, which are both good and bad, and one could end up liking both despite their shortcomings.

Hugh Grant is Bridget's gorgeous boss Daniel. For once he is not a sweet and intelligent loser, but a charming double-crosser and is better for it. Colin Firth is Mark Darcy, the sarcastic barrister who is ready to explode with passion and tenderness, but never does. The peculiar humour of the book has endured a harmless populist transformation, but that does not play like a disadvantageous calculated decision but like inspired fun. Consider the scene when Bridget is distressed by Darcy's sweater at a Christmas party.

The casting of Renee can also be viewed as an effort to make the book more open and keep it away from the danger of becoming an exclusively British cinematic in-joke. Once you've seen the opening sequences you will have difficulties picturing a sweeter Bridget who would make you care all along and not irritate you as she rushes from embarrassment to disaster.

Sure there will be fans of the book that will be alarmed when they see that their "best bits" didn't make it to the screen and that there are marginalized characters (Tom, Jude, and Shazzer for example), but this too is dictated by the constraints of the format and is done out of necessity rather than caprice.

Once that is taken into consideration, you can judge for yourselves whether this is the most genuine romance you've seen for many a moon. I dare you to admit it is not.