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Bridget Jones' Baby

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Strange movie.

Had its moments, but ... what happened to the theme of foot size?

SPOILER ALERT. As usual, I will proceed to discuss this movie without any regard to whether you've seen it or not or what plot twists I may be revealing. TURN BACK if you don't want to learn what this might teach you.

Anyway, half of the movie is the set up, the other half is a "who done it" where the "it" is "impregnated Bridget."

The two suspects are: Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, and Jack, played by Patrick Dempsey. Bridget has a long history with Mark; Jack is the new guy in her life.

Before my train of associations went elsewhere, I was going to say something about foot size. At one point, Bridget gets a sonogram, and learns that her baby (a) is a boy and (b) has large feet. A little later, we're privy to a conversation between Bridget and her father, where Dad mentions that HE has "dainty" feet which Bridget has inherited.

Yes, I know that foot size is often used as a gag parallel to penis size. But that doesn't seem to be the goal here, both references seem to be expository. There's only one expository reason for the  screenplay to include those points: someone wanted us to understand that the baby must have gotten his large-feet genes from his father. And THAT in turn would suggest a scene in which both men/potential Dads are barefoot, revealing ....

But the barefoot thing never happens. We never learn foot size for Mark or Jack. Instead, the Answer is revealed to the characters by a DNA test soon after the baby's birth, and is revealed to us, the viewers, only after Bridget and Mark are married.

Yes, Bridget and Mark get married. I issued the spoiler alert, so don't complain now.

During the wedding, Jack is holding the child. It appears that the resolution might be headed this way: Bridget marries her true love, but she (and he) will have to deal with another man as an involved not-just-biological father. But after the wedding, just outside the Church, Mark asks Jack for "my boy" back, and Jack hands him over. It was just baby-sitting. So ... the ending is that Bridget and Mark are both a married couple AND parents of the boy, a traditional nuclear family if ever there was one, chronology notwithstanding.

So that is the plot.  the foot size allusions could only have been put in there as a clue to a payoff that never comes.

Hmmmmm. Could it be that somebody decided well into production of the movie that the Big Foot Reveal moment seemed too much like a 19th century novelistic device, not at all 21st century, where the question would surely be settled by, ya know, DNA? And that they scuttled the denouement as originally planned but randomly kept the earlier references in the final cut?


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