Wednesday 22 May 2013

"Bridget Jones On The River Kwai"

From Wiki and Wiki:

In World War II, Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is frustrated: she is in her early thirties, still single and stuck in a Japanese prison camp in western London and worried about her weight. She works in publicity at a book publishing company in Thailand where her main focus is fantasizing about her commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) who informs her that all prisoners, regardless of weight issues, are to work on the construction of a railroad bridge at a New Year party hosted by her parents.

She re-meets the senior British officer, Lt. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), who reminds Saito that the Geneva Conventions exempt Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), the barrister son of her parents' friends, from manual labour. They had known each other as children. After their initial encounter,  Nicholson orders his officers to remain behind when the enlisted men are sent off to work.

Saito slaps him across the face with his copy of the conventions and threatens to have them shot, but Nicholson thinks that Bridget is a fool and Bridget thinks that he is arrogant and rude, and is disgusted by his officers standing all day in the intense tropical heat.

After a day beset by a series of mishaps, she misplaces her purse, breaks her coffee mug and gets placed in a punishment hut, while Nicholson is locked in "the oven," an iron box, without food or water. When she returns home that evening, the prisoners are working as little as possible and sabotaging whatever they can. She reaches to pull the curtains, only for them to fall off the wall. Nicholson conducts an inspection and is shocked by what he finds. That is the final straw of a stressful day.

When she catches sight of her reflection in the window, she decides to order Captain Reeves (Peter Williams) and Major Hughes (John Boxer) to design and build a proper bridge. She starts her own diary, which covers all her attempts to stop smoking, lose weight and find Mr Right, despite its military value to the Japanese.


Next week: Our thirty-something heroine leads a heroic but disastrous attempt to recapture German-held potential husbands in The Netherlands in "A Bridget Jones Too Far".

9 comments:

john b said...

Erm, you know in the second Bridget Jones movie she actually does get sent to a Thai prison camp, right?

Anonymous said...

JB, yes but that would have been too easy, and the bit you're thinking of will be in the next sequel "The Bridget of Madison County" where an elderly POW-cum-drug mule falls in love with the handsome old bloke from the consulate who turns out to be a tip-top 'Uman Rights lawyer etc.

View from the Solent said...

Will there be a musical Severn Bridgets for Severn Brothers?

Anonymous said...

I would go looking for my "Von Ryan's Pineapple Express" synopsis but it's on the Goon Forums and I swore never to go back there.

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, yes, that'll be the sixth sequel (or seventh film in the series).

RA, that's the spirit.

DBC Reed said...

Would be interested to see how this revisionist version of the Bridge too far deals with Lord Carrington's role in proceedings.

Anonymous said...

DBC, he resigns honourably after being caught wanking off at the sight of Bridget Jones' outsize knickers.

Bob E said...

Given the setting I assume ""A Bridget Jones Too Far" will be borrowing from "Ladri di biciclette", with suitable changes in the nationality and name of Antonio - perhaps to Orange Tony, a member of the Dutch Resistance.

Tim Almond said...

What about Triumph of The Bill, where Tosh Lyons and DCI Carver burn down Sun Hill, blaming it on some local car thieves and leading to an Enabling Act where Burnside ends up as Fuhrer, enforcing his iron rule against cut-and-shunt merchants in South London.

Starring everyone you've seen on TV and cinema since then.