Reviews: 'Bridget Jones's Diary,' 'Memento'

Here are reviews of new films in theaters Friday:

'Bridget Jones's Diary (R)

Even before all the credits have rolled on "Bridget Jones's Diary," we get a major clue about what is to follow: Renée Zellweger (as Bridget) is bemoaning her lack of a man by lolling dejectedly on the couch, gulping down vats of red wine and shamelessly lip-synching to a lonely-hearts ballad.

The scene is funny in a morbid sort of way -- watching a slightly chubby woman in her early 30s, feeling terribly lonely, immersed in the consolation vices of booze and cigarettes, making a private fool of herself in self-flagellating grief over a boyfriend-free life.

The problem with "Bridget Jones" is that the whole movie is like that: The tone is light, the comedic riffs are mostly sitcom-ish but often successful, the acting is nothing if not agreeable.

But the tireless and tired message of the movie is that a woman without a date is innately pathetic -- so much so that it probably would have enraged women in the time of Jane Austen, much less those in the brazenly empowered age of "Sex and the City."

Zellweger is comfortable inside her British accent, and does an admirable job of portraying this sharp-tongued, self-esteem-challenged creature. She's raw and bold at times, even in the physical sense. (She clearly -- and, for a Hollywood cutie-pie, bravely -- spared no method-acting hot-fudge sundaes in order to pack on a little extra for this role.)

Zellweger even manages to infuse a little dignity into the character at times, but the story barely tolerates it. That's because British author Helen Fielding's script, based on her best-selling fictional diary of a woman obsessed with a negative self-image, is shockingly old-fashioned fare.

It's all big-thigh jokes and how-to-attract-a-man clichés -- all about how women have to primp and perfect themselves to win their knight and ward off a sad end in spinsterhood.

It presents Bridget as a single woman desperate for a man to save her: first the gutter-mouthed cad at the publishing house where she works (Hugh Grant), then the more noble-minded lawyer with whom her mother tries to set her up (Colin Firth).

Grant is obviously gleeful, and plenty of fun to watch, now that he's been handed a role where he gets to be a little foul and nasty. He turns his smirky good charm to evil ends and is the most fun thing in the film because of it.

Firth, by contrast, is like a statue. He seems stuck in a period film of his own mind, acting serious beyond all proportion to the frothy fare in which he's cast. But even he lightens up a bit toward the end and manages to get in some humorous bits.

Still, for all the attempts of the actors to have some fun with the material -- and there are unquestionably some satisfying scenes -- you can't help but get the impression that this romantic comedy belongs to another, less enlightened age. It's all too much "Gidget Goes Gaga" instead of "Bridget Gets a Life."

If a thorough disdain for a century of feminism doesn't bug you, you may get enough laughs out of this to make it worth an entry in your diary some night. Me, I'm scratching it off my to-do list. -- Joseph Ruttle

'Memento' (R)

To call "Memento" riveting would be an exercise in understatement. Right from the backward-spooling, intense opening moments, this adventurous concept thriller catches the viewer with its experiment in reverse time travel.

The device is a dizzyingly captivating game designed to tantalize and challenge the audience: watching a character's life play out from a climax that opens the film, back through all the twists and turns that brought him there. It works wonderfully much of the way.

Cued to a subdued but intense soundtrack, "Memento" tells the story of a man (Guy Pearce) who loses his wife in a horrific rape-murder that also leaves him with a complete lack of short-term memory.

The condition means that he is forced to reconstruct everything from the trail to his wife's killer -- which is his obsessive and sole purpose in an otherwise aimless life -- to what hotel room he's checked into. He does so by leaving notes and Polaroids for himself, and by tattooing his own body with essential "truths" and "facts" that slip from mind as quickly as they enter.

The reversal-in-time gimmick starts suspiciously, as we see an opening scene literally play backward. Fortunately, the rest of this strange trip elliptically backpedals without actually driving in reverse ... which would probably just make the audience nauseous.

The mood is film noir with a postmodern spin, slipping from quietly intense, narrated, black-and-white sequences to "Pulp Fiction"-esque scenes in cars, motels and seedy industrial settings.

"Memento" is also surprisingly funny out of the blue at times, as Pearce's character confronts his strange memory problem in blunt and hilarious conversations with the people either duping or helping him (and of course he has little idea which is which, given that he literally can't remember meeting them).

Pearce is subdued but totally enthralling as the tortured soul at the story's core -- not to mention both broodingly sensual and wildly of the moment, given that his skin is significantly tattooed and much displayed.

As the woman who mysteriously comes to his aid, Carrie-Anne Moss ("The Matrix") brings a raw and savage quality. The scene in which she suddenly taunts Pearce for his aggravating inability to remember her is howlingly funny in its twisted way.

The film manages to raise some genuine ideas about the nature of memory, the unreliability of what we think we know about the people around us, and the pain that Pearce's character goes through -- not at his loss, but at his inability to ever get over that loss because of an endless cycle of not-remembering.

But for all the intensity and sense of purpose behind "Memento," this game of spinning ever backward begins to bog down near the finish. Rather than build to another spectacular climax, it comes to a resolution that is so improbable that it manages to negate much of the film's subtlety and thematic resonance.

The game that "Memento" plays is a brilliant one; but the narrative's paltry prize at the end doesn't measure up to the memory of the future that precedes it. -- Joseph Ruttle