I am about to declare Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason an all-time Christmas classic. Possibly even the best all-time Christmas classic. I know. I know. It’s not even all set at Christmas. I know.

But Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason has everything one needs for a duvet-on-the-sofa film, and I will set this out for you as clearly as possible. Possibly in song. Possibly in festive song. Ready? Here we go.

 

On the FIRST day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…Bridget Jones herself.

Bridget Jones is very like a partridge, in that she is plump, hilarious and incredibly useless at working in television. Also, a partridge would be phenomenally unsuccessful at jumping out of planes, and would probably also have to be sacked at six thousand feet.

(This is how Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason opens: Bridget Jones is jumping out of a plane to talk about skydiving on national television. That’s just one of those crazy things that happen to Bridget Jones. Christmas is a time for crazy things. Ergo, Christmas is a time for Bridget Jones.)

 

On the SECOND day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me..Mr and Mrs Jones.

Billing and cooing and biting each other like two little turtle doves, Bridget Jones’ parents are the most parenty parents in any film ever. They are charming, and awful, and the mum bloody loves lavender. Also, her dad is Jim Broadbent, and they have a host of awful friends, including Celia Imrie and pervy Uncle Geoffrey. They are just like your parents, probably. They are also incredibly adorable, and because it’s Christmas you can forgive them things like awful jumpers and wheely suitcases.

 

On the THIRD day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…Shazzer and Jude and Tom.

Neither French nor hens, but still completely brilliant. Sad Jude. Hippy Shazzer. Incredibly camp Tom. I just want to gather them all up in my arms and hug them for being so nice to Bridget, queen of the helpless. I mean, yes, Shazzer does get Bridget Jones sent to prison, but without the prison, we would never have had the slightly-racist Madonna impression or the crushing arrival of some GOD DAMN PERSPECTIVE, BRIDGET. Yay for Shazzer!

Kind friends and perspective- how much more Christmassy can you get?

 

On the FOURTH day of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, my true love brought to me…the Mexican ambassador, the head of Amnesty International, the Undersecretary for Trade and Industry and Bridget Jones talking about sex.

There has never been a moment more chilling than Bridget Jones telling the Mexican ambassador, the head of Amnesty International and the Undersecretary for Trade and Industry about her “rather graphic shag flashback”. Never. The unexpected speakerphone is the central dread of all right-thinking people, and Christmas, above all, is a time for dread. Will the turkey be raw? Will Aunt Margot be racist? Will you accidentally wrap the comedy secret-santa dildo up for Granny? Who knows. But you dread it, none the less.

 

On the FIFTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…one gold ring.

Charmingly, the one gold ring actually sported in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is not sported by Bridget, but by Bridget Jones’ marvellous mother. This thrills me more than I can say, since it offsets a tiny, tiny part of my feminist guilt at watching a film in which the woman’s sole endeavour is to GET A RING ON IT- the woman herself doesn’t end up much but happy, but her mother gets to remarry her father, and absolutely everything is lavender. Oh, and there’s snow. Snow! At Christmas! In England!

(That’s how you know it’s a film. It’s a Hollywood trick to stop people getting confused between movies and the news.)

 

On the SIXTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…six reasons why Bridget shouldn’t go out with Mark Darcy.

These six reasons might be the best reasons to break up with somebody ever, and they still get engaged. It’s Christmas. Make terrible decisions. Marry someone, even though you can’t ski, you can’t ride, you can’t speak Latin, your legs only come up to here *gestures*, you will always be just a little bit fat, and he folds his underpants before he goes to bed. Marry them, damn you, it’s Christmas.

(And no, there are no geese in this one. You try forcing a 2004 romantic comedy into a mediaeval Christmas song. You bloody try it.)

 

On the SEVENTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…graceful, charming, lesbian Rebecca.

My sister and I watched this film eight or nine times before we were even a little bit convinced that Bridget was a better choice for Mark than Rebecca.

(Yes, I have seen this film significantly more than nine times. We had a very limited selection of videos in my house.)

Rebecca is wonderful. Rebecca knows answers and knows what to wear to a ball. Rebecca has that fluty, fluty voice of the pleasant bitch. Rebecca has legs up to *here*. Rebecca is a brilliant, brilliant Worst Enemy, and hating her is the MOST FUN. And like a swan, you secretly suspect she could break a man’s arm at fifty paces. And also, she is a lesbian, and doesn’t need you anyway, Mark Darcy. So there. Rebecca! Swan!

 

On the EIGHTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…THE BIT WHERE SHE DOES A PROPOSE

Look. She’s wearing a vaguely maidy dress. She looks a bit..you know. Maidy. And she’s all wet, and there are hilarious lawyers, and there is the Peruvian Secretary for Trade again. And also, she gets the wrong door, and it is lovely, and charming, though I do sort of wish that we got to see that old man again, because tiny old lawyers deserve love as much as the next man, and the next man is Mark Darcy, and let’s all watch the clip together and feel happy, because it’s Christmas.

 

On the NINTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…ladies dancing…ish

Right. So. I was going to write a bit about her awful, awful gold dress (which is SO clearly awful), but I googled “Bridget Jones dancing”, and, um, this is the top result, and I just can’t keep this to myself. So, courtesy of Google Translate, I bring you

“solo performances pole dance for the movie Bridget Jones Diary, which was created to mark the second anniversary of Intimate dance studio, dancing: Zuzana Kňavová, Dagmar Čížková, Veronika Lokajová”. Bloody Nora. Enjoy. Or don’t. It’s not remotely SFW, unless your W is down with awful, awful pants. Merry Christmas.

 

On the TENTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…Mark Darcy and Daniel Cleaver GOING TO HAVE A FIGHT

There’s so much leaping in this bit I can hardly bear it. Look at them leap, these dashing lords! Look at Mark Darcy go! Look at them wrestle pitifully in the fountain! Look at them making arch references to Colin Firth’s career! I love this scene so much. Who needs Christmas snow when you could have Christmas soaking wet Hugh Grant?

 

On the ELEVENTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…Excellent Soundtrack Jones

There are literally no pipers in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, but it does have a soundtrack full of the songs you want at Christmas. Carly Simon. Will Young. Beyonce. The Darkness. Robbie Williams. Rufus Wainwright. Aretha Franklin. NOT A DUFF NOTE IN IT. As our esteemed friend Harry Harris might say, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is EXCELLENT SOUNDTRACK JONES. (Ask him what it means. It’s a Welsh thing, I think. Oh, those Welsh.)

 

On the TWELFTH day of Christmas, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason brought to me…*drum roll*

Twelfth day of Christmas x Bridget Jones 2 = 24th December. And it is always, always on TV somewhere on the 24th December. After all, that’s what you really want from a Christmas film- one which requires very little effort, and lets you just drink wine, eat Milk Tray and reflect upon how glad you are that you aren’t Bridget Jones.