[00:00:08] Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our Series of Unfortunate Events listener polls, learn about chick lit, and preview Bridget Jones Diary.
Hello, and welcome back to another prequel episode of this film is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We have every one of our segments. Quite a bit to get into, so let's just jump right in to our patron shoutouts.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: That's why we have two new free patron members or whatever this week. I don't know what they're called. They're not patrons.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess not technically.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: By definition, a patron is someone who provides you with something for.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Well, they're providing us with their engagement presence.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: But two new free patrons this week, Ved and Melissa. So thank you both Ved and Melissa. And then we had one new $5 Hugo Award winning patron this week, KD. Just the initials KD. So thank you, KD for supporting us at that $5 level. Make sure you get that bonus content. We actually just watched our January bonus movie last night. If you haven't heard or if you haven't paid attention, we're talking about the favorite 2018's the Favorite Yorgos Lanthimos film. That'll be our episode for January. We're recording that probably tomorrow or the day after, so it'll be out within the week. So look out for that. Yeah, and you get all that at the $5 level and at the $15 level, our academy Award winning patrons, we recognize them every single prequel. They are Nicole Goble, Eric Harpo Rat, Nathan, Vic Apocalypse, Mathilde, Steve from Arizona Int Draft, Teresa Schwartz, Ian from Wine Country, Kelly Napier, Gratch Justgratch. Shelby says they really made a movie where Kraven the hateable fights Rhino the hot headed sweetheart and said Rhino's the villain. That darn Skag V Frank and Alina Starkov, thank you all very much for your continued support. We appreciate it so much. Katie, let's see what people had to say about A Series of Unfortunate Events.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man. All right. On Patreon, we had eight votes for the books, zero for the movie, and one listener who couldn't decide.
Our first comment was from Shelby, who said, for once, I don't have much to add. I'm with you on all the points you made in the episode. Wow, I love the validation. Shelby needed that this week.
I read the series back when all but the final Book was out. It's really up in the air whether I like a book written in this style, but these worked for me. I reread the whole series to prepare for the first season of the Netflix show and kind of burned myself out. So I've only seen season one. I think taking it a season at a time would be the way to go for this film is lit and then added an edit to say, apparently I did watch season two, but I remember nothing. And you know what? That is fair, because I was thinking about it and I also feel like I remember more about the first season of that show than the last. I don't remember how it ended.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: No, I don't either. I remember much more about the first season. But I think part of that, to be fair, especially now, is having watched the movie that helped me remember. I think the first season is like the first three books. I think it roughly covers, like, what the movie did. Ish. Something like that.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Probably a little bit more than that.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Maybe a little more. I can't.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: It's 13 books, so I imagine three seasons.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: But I think. I think, like, yeah, it's close.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: I thought that was only two seasons.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: No, they did. I thought they did three. Maybe it was only two. I thought they did three seasons. I thought they did like 8, 8 and 10 or something. Like 10, 8 and 8 or something. I'm pretty sure it was three. I could be wrong, but yeah, I. Anyways, yeah, I don't know. In terms of taking it one season at a time, maybe we could. Maybe that would be the way to do it.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Maybe.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Who knows?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: We don't have to figure that out now. So that's a problem if it exists for five years from now. So.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Kelly Napier, who said, I'm also going with the books for all the reasons Katie said, but I also want to go to bat for the movie. I agree with everything both of you said about the movie. It isn't as bad as everyone says it is. And it was hampered from the start because of the challenge of fully adapting three books into one movie.
Also, I thoroughly do not enjoy Jim Carrey as an actor. There are two exceptions to my dislike of him. The Truman show and this.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: I mean, those are probably. Well, Truman show is probably my favorite Jim Carrey thing, but he can be a lot. Him in most things.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: He can be a lot.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Sure. Absolutely. And I'm not saying I love him in everything. Like, I don't have really any. I was never a person who watched like the Ace Ventura movies and stuff. Like when he was doing like, his really, like, Jim Carrey shtick, like in the 90s and stuff, I was never really, like, into his movies. I never really watched him much. And I think. I know some of them have aged very poorly in lots of ways. But on top of that, I just. I don't know how, like. But. But everything else I've seen him in, like, Eternal Sunshine, the Spotless Mind, this Truman show, even the number 23, which is not a good movie. I think he's perfectly good in it. I don't know. I have to think. I feel like I've always liked him when I've seen him in movies that I've liked. I just don't always like the movies that he's in. Every movies that he's in and even him necessarily, like, by extension, him sometimes in those, but.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: But I don't think I have, like, a broad dislike of Jim Carrey. I don't know.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Well, Kelly went on to say, he so fully stepped into the Count Olaf I envisioned in the books. It actually took me a while to accept Neil Patrick Harris in the role. When I watched the series similarly to the Chronicles of Narnia, I always felt a little robbed that we never got the rest of the series in movie form. But I'm glad we got the Netflix version eventually.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: And in similar light, I think the same thing's happening right. With Chronicles of Nar. Isn't. Or did that get canceled again? I don't know. Wasn't. What's her name?
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Yeah, there was. Yeah. I don't remember what streaming service that.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: I don't know what streaming service, but what's Promising Young Woman and. No, that's Emerald Fennel, Pretty Little Women. And what is that Director Greta Gerwig was slated to.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Did you not hear about that?
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Yeah, she was adapting Chronicles of Narnia for. As Like a series. Yeah, maybe it was me. I'm pretty sure it was a series.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I haven't heard anything about that. I haven't heard anything about that in.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: A long time now, or at least a year or something. So. But I think there was talk of that happening at some point. So.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Next comment was just real quick.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: I wanted to comment on not accepting. Not being. Took her a while to accept Neil Patrick Harris in the series. I would have to rewatch the series because it's been a long time. But, man, I felt like they were very similar. Like, I guess maybe. I guess that could be a sticking point because they are so similar. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't again. And I. Yeah, interesting. To me, it just felt like kind of a seamless. Like, yeah, they're both playing the same guy in a way that feels very similar.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Nathan, who said, I want to start by saying, I have only read the first three books and this was my first go with the movie. But I did watch and really like the Netflix show. I say that because I don't think I'm being a book purist when I say I gotta go with the books because I don't think the movie was very good at all.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: First, the way the movie tried to adapt three books did not work. As Katie mentioned, the books or in my experience, the Netflix episodes do tend to get repetitive. And combining three of them so close together only made things worse. It felt like the movie kept trying to start a plot, but every time it set up a climax, it immediately deflated the stakes.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: I kind of don't feel that way. I think I found the. Now, if they had kept making additional movies and they kept doing the same thing, I might have started to feel that way.
But I think the fact that in this movie, it's all contained in one movie, even though it is repetitive, made it feel less obnoxious. Because that was a feeling I had with the Netflix series, was finding the repetitive nature of the structure got grading. But I think part of that was because we would go whole EP like it was whole seasons. We had all these episodes and you would finish a storyline and then the next episode would start and you're expecting something different, and then it would repeat again and you're like, ok, it's still. And again, I mostly enjoyed the Netflix series, but here I didn't have that feeling of like, oh, God, here we go again. Because I guess because I knew with the movie, like, I know there's the end, like, the movie's two hours long. I know it's not like with the TV show when we start a new episode and I'm like, oh, no, they're doing the same thing again. I'm like, well, we got a whole nother episode. You know what I mean? Like, it just felt kind of different. It's just fascinating that our experiences could differ in that way.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Nathan went on to say, the parts of the books the movie took out were admittedly not the most interesting parts of the books, but they did include a lot of the extended direct interaction between the kids and Count Olaf. Without this, the story loses a lot of its dramatic tension. And it feels very bare bones.
Secondly, I think Jim Carrey was a mistake as Count Olaf. I thought going in that he.
I thought going in that he made a lot of sense. I don't get the same sense of menace from Book Olaf that Katie does. He keeps getting foiled by children and he only succeeds to the extent that he does because every other adult is just farcically dumb. So I think he makes sense as a bumbling comic villain who nevertheless will kill you. I think Jim Carrey could have nailed that role, except for some reason we get an understated performance from Carrey.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Understated?
I don't know if I would describe his performance in this movie as understated.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: I guess maybe compared to some other stuff.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: He's done some Jim Carrey stuff, maybe, but that's. I don't know. I think. Yeah, I think he's very pretty big in this movie.
Not as big as Jim Carrey is possible of being, I guess. But I also don't know if that would work for the character. I think if we're doing the mask levels of Jim Carrey, I think that would have been too much personally, but interesting.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: I think Jim is a great comedic actor when he's on his game, but he works best when he's allowed to play, not just to the cheap seats, but to the people sitting in the parking lot outside the theater. He never really goes off in this film. Almost like he also thought Count Olaf needed to be throttled back so he could be taken more seriously, but lacked the middle gear to pull it off.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't feel that way at all. And I don't feel that way about Jim Carrey again from the performances of his that I've seen, which is admittedly not all of them, but I also like him in yes Man. I don't remember if I even like that movie, but I saw that movie and I remember thinking he was pretty when it came out. But I think he's a much better actor than.
I don't know. I find him to be a more compelling actor even when he's not doing his super over the top, you know, the masked style Jim Carrey stuff or like, again, Ace Ventura Jim Carrey stuff, but I don't know. Interesting. Again, it's just different subjective experiences of Jim Carrey there. I do find him to be a pretty compelling actor.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Finally, I get that a major motion picture probably doesn't want to commit to the this series is a bummer bit as hard as Daniel Handler did. But the hopeful ending was Just fundamentally wrong for this series. I would roll my eye as if a normal movie felt the need to have a voiceover tell me that if I think about it, the orphans have each other and that's all they really need because I'm capable of understanding subtext without a film holding my hand. It's even worse in this film because the basic conflict of the book series is that they do make you feel like everything is going to be okay, despite Lemony Snicket's repeated declarations otherwise.
We all know that the kids love each other and we know that in a normal story they would eventually get their happy ending, but not in this series. It undermines this conflict to have the narrator agree with us that, yeah, maybe they are okay after all.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't necessarily felt like it undermined it for me, but that's. I don't know. It's hard to.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: I didn't necessarily mind that because I was kind of approaching this movie as like a self contained thing because I knew that only this movie exists within this series.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: I would also have to remember how the series ends. Like the ending kind of sentiment that the series leaves you with and like, where the kids end up. I don't remember that at all.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah, neither do I, because I know.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: I will say this, though. I know while there's not like a happy ending, I feel pretty confident that I would remember if, like, all the kids died.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: So, like, that's not what happens. They, they do have at least somewhat of a happy ending from my memory. Right. Like, yeah. Or at least a neutral.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Like where, where again, maybe things aren't happy and, but they do have each other. I don't know. Like, I feel like the ending of this movie is in line from my memory with the spirit of the ending of the series.
But I don't. I, I'm just, I'm skateballing because I really don't remember.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: I mean, I was gonna say I, I. It didn't bother me just watching this film, but I can definitely see the argument that it is out of character for the character of Lemony Snicket.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in a, in something that would be ostensibly a continuing story where this isn't the end. Yeah. I don't know. Interesting.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And then Nathan had a couple other random thoughts here. I forgot about Jude Law. He was in like, everything around the time this movie came out. And I don't remember the last time I saw him in anything.
My guess for who Brian was thinking of to play Count Olaf was Colin Farrell. I think he would nail the menace and the fundamental incompetence which undercuts it.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Interesting. I don't.
Yeah, I could see it. I'm not saying he wouldn't work.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: I didn't remember the last thing I saw Colin Farrell in.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Well, we just saw him in Now. I can't remember. But we did see him in something not all that long ago.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Wait, okay, hang on.
Did he not play Grindelwald?
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Yes, he did.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Before Johnny Depp.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Everybody was, like, disappointed because they were like, it should have just been Colin Feral.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And then they recast Johnny Depp to Mads Mikkelsen in the third that we never saw.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Oh, my God, did they?
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yes, because of the whole Johnny Depp story. They recast Johnny Depp again. And, yeah, in the third one, I believe it's Mads Mickelson.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: But they never made that one.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: No, they. They did the. The Secrets of Dumbledore or whatever the heck. We never, never saw it because the second one was so bad. We literally just never saw it.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: I have no memory of that movie coming 100.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: That movie came out. We just never saw it because we were like.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: The second one was so bad. Among other reasons.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Among other reasons. Yeah. And that was also the last thing I saw Jude Law and I think was because he was Dumbledore.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's right.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: In that series.
Which. I actually liked him a lot as Dumbledore in his brief appearance in the second one. I thought he worked well as Dumbledore, but, you know. Yeah, I. He hasn't been. I don't know. I haven't seen him in a lot of stuff since then, but. Yeah.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: And Nathan's last little note here was the twins who played Sunny have the last name Hoffman, so I thought maybe they were related to Dustin Hoffman and that's why he's in the film. I couldn't find any evidence that this is actually.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: That's the best lead we have so far. Honestly. That could be it.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: I am honestly convinced that Dustin Hoffman was just, like, a fan of the books and was like, also could be that. Yeah, give me a cameo in this.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Very, very well could be that.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Our next comment was from Vic Apocalypse, who said, huge fan of this movie. And I really don't understand how some people can't stand it. I don't know anything about the books, but I've always thought of this as a weird kids movie like Willy Wonka. And thanks for the info about the series on Netflix. You've finally given me a reason to sign up.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Wow. There's plenty of good stuff on there.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there's.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: We don't watch Netflix as much anymore because a lot of shows we're watching now are on other stuff, but there's plenty of good stuff on there. And, yeah, the show's good. So check it out.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: And then we have a comment from Carissa, who said saying that it was supposed to be the new Harry Potter makes so much sense. I remember my grandma buying me all the books. Books after the movie, but I abandoned them because I was overwhelmed. That's understandable.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: And I do think that the. It was supposed to be the new Harry Potter. I think from the sense of, like, kind of the media thought and like.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Wider culture was when I say that it was supposed to be the new Harry Potter, and which. A lot of stuff. A lot of stuff kept happening because Harry Potter was such a runaway success.
Every time a new bit of promise, it would be like, oh, that's the new Harry Potter. And I do think that this series probably shouldered a little bit more of that mantle than other series did because this series did get really popular.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, clearly they made a movie and a Netflix series out of it, like, later. Yeah. But. Yeah, but point being, I don't know if I don't think, like, it was, like, set out to be, like, this is gonna be the next Harry Potter, because it's also, like, I also think it's a very unfair comparison. Comparison. It doesn't really feel like Harry Potter at all.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: No, it's not like Harry Potter at all. No, no. My point. My point in saying that was simply from, like. Like, a marketing perspective and, like, a cultural discussion perspective.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: And it very much applies to. What Chris is saying here is like, her grandma bought her all the books probably because the grandma saw some news article about how this new series, like, it's the new Harry Potter, like, that kind of thing.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: And Carissa went on to say, seriously considering watching the series now after years of feeling like it's not for me.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Would love if one day you guys were willing to do even some of the books. I understand it's a big ask, but it just seems like something you guys would do really well, even if you are just picking a few or giving us a less detailed version of it. But I'm sure I'll love whatever you do this year.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Well, if whatever we do, even if we do it at some point, it wouldn't be this year, so. No, it would be.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Definitely would not be this year.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Down the road, for sure. But yeah, awesome. Thank you. New patron, I think too, right?
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Like just newer, I think. Yeah.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Well, it's the first time I remember seeing a comment from Karissa in the Patreon Feedback. Maybe it's not the first one, but one of the first couple. So thank you.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: All right. And our last comment from Steve from Arizona, who said. So I decided to watch the movie and I find it kind of meh. It's definitely not my cup of tea. But then again, I wasn't really into this genre of film.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: You will probably hate me. Could never hate you, Steve. But I'm not a fan of the rubber faced, over the top version of Jim Carrey.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: Well, I have it on very good authority that the problem with this movie is that he wasn't rubber faced over again. It's just very funny how different people, how we perceive things so differently.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Give me the Truman show or the Majestic. Jim Carrey. The Majestic. Another movie title. Or are we calling Jim Carrey Majestic?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: I think it's a movie title.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: I think, all in all, I would have loved to see Daniel Day Lewis as Count Olaf. The onset stories would have led to a standalone documentary.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Either way, onto the next film.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: That actually could have been bad. Like he's. He'd be. You'd get the stories of him sending like, dead animals.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: Stuff like that. Like the Jared Leto thing. I don't know. I feel like I've always heard that Daniel Day Lewis isn't as much of an asshole, like, with that kind of like, method stuff. Maybe not. I could be wrong about that. He's notorious for his method acting. But I. I don't. I've never heard any stories of him. Of him being like, the. As weird about it as, like.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I mean, I definitely haven't heard any Jared Leto level stories about him, but.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: He is pretty famously hard to work with, I think.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Over on Facebook we had three votes for the books and zero for the movie. And Paige said books. The fact that they even tried to smash three books into one movie was ridiculous. Jim Carrey did great as Olaf, and the Baudelaires were actually pretty good too. But the pace of the movie was much too fast to accurately describe what was going on.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: That's interesting. I do wonder if I'll never know because I can't watch it now having not watched the Netflix series.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: And I don't remember watching it the first time without watching the Netflix series. But to me, watching it this time, the pacing felt perfectly fine. I did not Feel like it was suffering from running at a breakneck pace trying to get through all these stories. It felt.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I think there were enough quiet moments.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah. That and I just, I felt like I don't know again, I also don't know what all is cut from the book. So I'm not obviously can't compare. Like, oh, I would have loved for this to be there. But to me it felt like they covered the three Brooks pretty well again from my memory of the Netflix series. And, and again, I felt like pacing wise, it worked pretty well for me just as watching it as a movie. But again, that may. I think part of that may be helped by I have some additional knowledge from having watched the Netflix series. I have stuff banging around in my head of like, roughly what's going on here? Yeah, that I think might have helped with that. So it's hard to tell.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: All right. Over on Instagram, we had nine votes for the books, four for the movie, and four listeners who couldn't decide. Warren Badinski said, I choose the movie. I never read the books. There was a very effective advert for them in the UK that made them seem very depressing, so I didn't go near them.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: That's so funny.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Then the movie came out and with Jim Carrey seemed. It seemed more fun. I haven't watched it for a long time, but I remember enjoying it. There you go, Tim Wahoo.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Wow. A rare actual appearance.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: No, Tim Wahoo leaves comments more frequently than you would think. Think. But most of them say Katie always chooses the book, so I just don't read them.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: No, I know. That's what I'm saying.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: No, I'm.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Oh, you were being sarcastic.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: I was being sarcastic. I was saying they actually made it into the episode because they weren't just.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: I know. I'm including your comment because you weren't just trolling Tim Wahoo. I don't even know if Tim Wahoo listens to us.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Probably not.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Anyway, Tim said, I know nothing about it, but I do call my dog Lemony Snicket sometimes. I vote movie.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: There you go. So I also still feel like they're kind of trolling.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah, but not. Not in a way that feels the other one.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: And our last comment on Instagram was from Hannah Joseph, who said, I love each adaptation. They all have their own amount of unique details and horrifying charm. If I had to choose, I'd say the books. I read them all in elementary slash middle school and they sparked my love for reading and writing and dark humor, of course.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you, Hannah. Maybe another new commenter.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Or maybe Hannah.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Hannah chimes in every.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Chimes in every now and then. Yeah. We didn't have any comments on threads, but we did have one vote for the movie.
Somebody jumped onto our. We're really struggling on threads in Blue Sky.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we might get an influx to Blue Sky.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: I hope so, based on recent events. If you're on Blue sky, please follow us. Interact with our polls.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Even more of a. Well, not that we have There was really. Our listeners were still on Twitter anyways. But no Twitter exodus.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Is really.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: We were mostly dead on Twitter by the time I deleted our account on Twitter. Yeah. And then on Goodreads, we had zero votes for the books and one for the movie. And Mikko said, I too started the Netflix series when it came out, but gave up somewhere halfway through because the repetition was becoming maddening. The kids go to a quirky new home. Count Olaf follows in disguise. Absolutely no one believes the kids. Olaf deals with the caretaker. The kids manage to foil his plans at the last second. Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat. I could feel the same repetition brewing even in these three books.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: I. I agree with that. Like I said, that was one of the experiences I remember from the Netflix series and the like. Really. I think the only thing about it that I remember not liking, like really like the main thing where I was like, okay, like it just got a little tedious. But again, I think what worked from my memory is that they're still. They still are giving you enough other interesting larger plot with that in the Netflix series. At least that it made me like, want to keep going to like, see how it all wrapped up.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: But I did find that tedious.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: I could feel that. Oh no, I already read that. I disagree about a word that here. Beans bits. Those got annoying somewhere during chapter two. I think the movie has some good changes and additions. I too liked Josephine's fears having a payoff. Jim Carrey is clearly a different Count Olaf. I really don't know what to think about the book version. He's clearly sinister and joyless, but at the same time, his plans are so childish and only work because all the adults are idiots. It makes it hard for me to view him as a serious threat, even as he kills people. It's funny that you specifically mentioned the line, where do I assign for the fortune children? Because I too took note of it, but because the subtitles made the slip of the tongue way more natural. Though I get the joke is that there's no Way anyone would mix up fortune and children.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: In Finnish. Count Olaf revised. Oh, boy.
Oh, my.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: I couldn't begin to tell you. I don't know if I've. I'm sure I've heard Finnish spoken, but.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: I don't know O M A I S U U s, which means assets or wealth to the very similar sounding omeset. O M A I S E T meaning close relatives or next of kin.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: So kind of so that, like, really works for Infinish.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Almost the same word. Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: However, the translations of the books left more to be desired. Both the own hand resolution and the message hidden in grammatical errors were unbelievably clunky in the translation. I imagine that the grammar errors especially would be, like, particularly hard to do.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I still feel like they could pull it off if done like I feel like it should be. Not. I don't know, Definitely harder. But I'm always amazed when I always heard, like, all the kind of clever ways.
The thing that jumps to mind, I'm sorry, is in Harry Potter, all the different ways the Lord Voldemort, I am Tam or Volo riddle. Like, they did that in every language that those books were translated into. And I'm sure in some of them they are kind of clunky.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: But what I've heard is that generally they were pretty well. Which. Yeah.
So I think that point being, I think they probably could have done it, but.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
I don't know if the book fans like or dislike that the movie gave a nod to the book ending. When Violet starts to sign her name, Jim Carrey interjects with right hand, please.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: I missed that. I did not notice it.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: I did not have any big feelings about it.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Well, it's at least a fun reference. Yeah, I just didn't even. Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: I think I have to give this to the movie. I feel like the books are objectively better, but I just had more fun with the movie, mostly due to Jim Carrey.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Just to be clear, Mikko put scare quotes around objectively there, which you read, but I just. Just giving Mikko, you know, letting people know that Miko doesn't assume that there's such a thing as objectively better art there.
I understand what you're saying, Mikko. Anyways, what was the final breakdown?
[00:28:24] Speaker B: The winner this week was the books with 20 votes to the movie. Six plus five listeners who couldn't decide.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Hey, good. Good number of votes again though, people coming back when we're starting doing popular properties again.
Fantastic. Thank you all for all your feedback. We always love hearing what you have to say and responding to it. But now it's time to learn a little bit. And this week we're learning about chick lit.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
So that's chick lit. Two words. We're not talking about the gum.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yes, that has an S on the end. Chiclet.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: That's true.
A single single one would be a.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Chick lit, I assume, or chick lie, I don't know.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: But yeah, chick literature. Yes, that's what we're talking about. And I would have sworn on my life that we had already covered this as a learning things topic, but I didn't have it written down in my topics tracking sheet.
So away we go.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: I don't remember covering it. I don't know when we would have. I mean, there's probably something that would.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Have applied, but I'm imagining that it must have just come up in like a book, notes for some other property, but I can't remember what. Yeah, so maybe.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Sorry, I was thinking maybe one of the top things that popped in my head, Legally Blonde might be like.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe Legally Blonde or the Devil Wears Prada, maybe those would be like.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: The two main ones that immediately.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
So chick lift is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at women.
It was pretty widely used in the 90s and 2000s, but the term has fallen out of fashion with pretty much everyone. Yeah, we don't really use it anymore.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: No.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships and workplace struggles. And they typically do that in humorous and light hearted ways.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: The three things women are allowed to do.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Romantic relationships, female friendships, workplace, Struggling in the workplace. And this is, this is, this is the modern woman.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Because if we go back a little farther, it's not workplace struggles. It's like homemaker struggles.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah, like raising her kids. Yeah, yeah. Like the washer's broken or whatever. Yeah.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: The format developed through the early 90s with books such as Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale in 92 and Catherine Alliot's The Old Girl Network in 94.
Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, which is what we are covering, is often cited as the urtext of chick lit by critics.
Urtext meaning that it like exemplifies what.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: The genre is, er, being ur.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: So by the late 1990s, chick lit titles regularly topped bestseller lists and a lot of publishing houses opened up imprints that were entirely devoted to it.
By the mid 2000s, then the market was saturated and by the early 2010s, publishers had largely abandoned it as its own category.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Flash in the pan genre, there.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: Sub genre.
However, at the peak of its popularity, there were a slew of related sub genres that were proposed with similar names, such as Chiclet Jr. For young readers. I imagine that would cover things like the Click that.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Why wasn't it just called chick? Chick lit.
Like. Like a. Like a. Sorry, I'm trying to think of thinking like a. There's a pun there with baby chickens.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: But it's already chick. So, like, how do you put.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: Like a chick?
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Call it egglet?
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Like. Yeah, well, like. But you just change the spelling. So instead of C, H, I, C K, space, L I, T, you just make it C H I, C, K, L E, T. All one word. Chiclet.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: But that's.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: That's the candy.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: That's the candy.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: I don't know. Never mind.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: There was also mommy lit for moms, right?
And Chiclet and corsets.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: There's got to be a better one for that.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Historical fiction. Although in all fairness, according to Wikipedia, that term was only used by one person in an academic paper, so it wasn't like a market. No marketing genius came up with that.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Clearly, because it's a mouthful.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: There were also some, we'll say culturally sus. Variants tossed around, including, and I apologize for what's about to come out of my white mouth, sistalit for black readers and chica lit for Latina readers.
So whatever you want to make of that.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Culturally, it depends a lot on who.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Depends on who's saying it, who's using it.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
Who. Who coined those terms? I don't know.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: That is the million dollar question. A controversy over chick lit focused at first on the literary, the books slash the genre. However, over time, controversy has focused more on the term itself and whether the concept of a chick lit genre is inherently sexist.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Like, obviously. Right.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: Well, you'd be surprised at people's opinions.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: It feels obviously inherently sexist. But that doesn't mean. This will be my initial take. Just surface level. Let me insert my CIS at white guy opinion here. I mean, the whole podcast is to be fair, but it feels inherently sexist. But that doesn't mean that as a genre, it's not meaningful or useful, or that it couldn't be sort of like, I don't know if reclaimed is the right term, because again, I don't know who started calling it that. But, like, I don't. Like, I think it could be. It feels like a genre that is meaningful. And a meaningful distinction. But the term chick lit very clearly has an inherently kind of sexist connotation and dismissiveness is kind of what it feels like to me.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Well, I do have some quotes here from different authors. So, for example, in 2003, Scottish author Jenny Colgan, who had previously kind of been like a champion of the term and then changed her mind on it, but in an article for the Guardian, she stated, quote, chicklet is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut lit, it couldn't be more insulting.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, I agree. It definitely feels like it is a derisive term used to demean a category of literature is what it sounds like.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: However, on the other side of things, in 2006, self identifying chick lit author Lauren Baratz Logstead claiming it, that's what I said, published an anthology of stories titled this is Chiclet. A project which, awful close to the.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Brand name, getting awful close to a cease and desist letter from this film is lit llc. Just kidding.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: A project she said aimed to prove that chick lit was not all, quote, Manolos and Cosmos and cookie cutter books about women juggling relationships and careers in the new millennium, but rather a genre that deals with friendship and laughter, love and death. That is the stuff of life.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. That also feels a little Manolo's and Cosmos.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Well, that's what she's saying. It's not all about that stuff.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Right. I guess my point was gonna be that I get what she's saying and I think what she's saying makes a lot of sense. My only pushback was gonna be that Manolas and Cosmos and women juggling relationships and careers in the new millennium is in itself the stuff of life and separating from.
To me, it almost feels a little inherently problematic to separate that out as like, look, I get that some chick lit is just sex in the city nonsense, Gar. It's like, well, okay, but that is like. And I'm not saying, you know, that stuff can have its own issues and whatnot, but like. And again, I think. I don't think we have two sentences here. I. Yeah, it sounds like. I think I would mostly probably very much agree with what this person is saying. But I also think that almost even in within that feels like there's a slight level of like, dismissiveness of the.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Part of it that is like, yeah, it's internalized misogyny.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: That's what it feels a little bit of that.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Of like, I don't play with Barbies I don't like pink.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: It's not all shoes and pink cocktails. It's like, okay, but like, that is.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: A thing people can. Like, that could be part of it.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Now, to be fair, she does say it's not. Not all that. So, like, they're saying, like, that isn't the only thing. This. This. What they're saying isn't necessarily denigrating stuff that does that. I think it's kind of implied in what they're saying. But you could also read what they're saying is like, look, that's not the only thing that Chicklet compiler comprises. Be like, same thing as saying, like, look, fantasy isn't only orcs and wizards. You're not necessarily saying that orcs and wizards in fantasy is like, bad or dumb. Saying, it's not the only. Yeah, but that being said, something about that to me came across as like.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: There'S a little bit more. Yeah. And I do think that the conversation about it, at least the representation that we have here, from what I found on Wikipedia, it's very much rooted in the time period.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: You said this was written in 2006. Yeah, these were things that we were all kind of grappling with at the time because, you know, as we came into the new millennium, we kind of left behind the like, girl power move of the 90s, which I, in my opinion, was a little more grounded and it turned into something that was like a little sexier, like, of like a Sex in the City kind of a thing.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Like, we left up the girl power and got to the girl boss.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we got a promotion. We were like, at least got a promotion. Girl boss is something I associate more with the 2010s, but we were like, bridging the gap between those two things.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: That's what I was alluding to.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Where we were like, oh, she's a career woman, but her career can only be writing for a fashion magazine kind of an era.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: So, as I said, the term has largely fallen out of favor since the 2000s. Most contemporary writers, at least English language writers who write what could be considered chick lit, reject the term itself while simultaneously arguing that blanket dismissals of their work are rooted in sexism, which I would agree with.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Yeah. That's kind of what I was trying to get at.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: In 2014, author Marilyn Keys stated in an interview, it's meant to be belittling. It's as if it's saying, oh, you silly girls with your pinkness and shoes, how will you ever run the world? But as I've matured. I've realized that I'm very proud of what I write about. And I know that the books I write bring happiness and comfort to people.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That is a little bit about the genre of chick lit. And let's talk now about the Ur text of chick lit. The main other thing I've used urtext in other. The main other thing I think of in relation to the Ur text is the book ur fascism, which is.
This is very different kind of energies from these two different things. So, anyways, but let's learn a little bit about Bridget Jones Diary. Here she is. How's your love life? How's your love life? Why is it there are so many unmarried women in their 30s these days, Bridget?
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Suppose it doesn't help that underneath our clothes our entire bodies are covered in scales.
Mother's trying to fix you up with some divorcee. You remember Bridget?
[00:40:26] Speaker A: She used to run around your lawn with no clothes on. Remember?
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Bridget Jones Diary is a 1996 novel by British journalist, novelist and screenwriter Helen Fielding. And the title is not a misnomer. This is an epistolary novel in the format of a diary.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: I don't know if I knew. That makes sense.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
So the novel evolved from a column that she wrote. She wrote a Bridget Jones Diary column in the Independent and the Daily Telegraph.
And as a columnist, Fielding often lampooned women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan, as well as criticizing wider societal trends in Britain at the time. So I've never read this column. I've never read this book, but apparently there was social commentary, so we'll see if that makes its way through everything.
According to Wikipedia, the novel is loosely based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I will be the judge of that.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: I have a note about that in my book Notes or movie notes? Yeah, kind of.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: The novel was first published in 1996, and it became an international success pretty quickly. A sequel, bridget Jones, the Edge of Reason, was published in 1999. And two further novels, Bridget Jones, Mad about the Boy, and Bridget Jones's Baby, were published in 2013 and 2016, respectively. And I.
Bridget, the Edge of Reason was definitely made into a movie.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: And I'm Mad about the Boy is like a movie that's out now. I think. I think there's another.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Well, we'll get to it. There's another one in there that's not listed in your. There's another movie. Wait.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Oh, is there?
[00:42:15] Speaker A: Oh, wait, no.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Bridget Jones, the Edge of Reason.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Bridget Jones, Mad about the Boy and then Bridget Jones's Baby.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: I missed you saying Edge of Reason. That was the other one I was thinking of.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I know for sure. Edge of Reason and Bridget Jones Baby were both made. I have no idea. Maybe Mad about the Boy was. I. I don't know.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: No. That's interesting because I knew that there were more movies, but I didn't realize that those movies were also books.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: First.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I didn't know that either.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: But this novel, this first novel won the 1998 British Book of the Year award. And the Tracy Bennett.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: It's like you planned it. Mad about the Boy comes out on Valentine's Day.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Or the day before Valentine's Day, 1998.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: British Book of the Year, and Tracy Bennett won the 2000 Audie Award for solo female narration for her audiobook narration.
And then in 2003, the novel was listed at number 75 on the BBC's survey, the Big Read. And in 2019, the BBC included Bridget Jones Diary on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: So I didn't know this was like, an inspirational story. I don't. I. I really, again, I really know.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: I know literally nothing about it. I. I like. Other than memes, but, like. And even then, very few. But I. I never would have thought that inspirational was like the, like, you know.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Would be like, a word you would apply. I would like funny, biting, sure. Quirky, romantic, whatever. I. But inspirational is not really. It's interesting.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: Maybe we'll be inspired.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Maybe.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: My last note here is that at one point, there was a musical adaptation in the works with music by British pop star Lily Allen that was due to open in the west end in 2012, but it did not. And I.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: But did not.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: Did not care to try to look into why it didn't open. Allen stated in 2014 that while the musical was finished, it was unlikely to see the light of day. All right, so maybe someday. Maybe someday, Bridget Jones Diary fans, there.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Will be a musical. Well, there was a film, though. So let's learn a little bit more about Bridget Jones Diary.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: The movie will persevere with resolution to find a nice, sensible man.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: How about a drink at my place? Totally innocent. No funny business, just full sex.
Now, this is a very silly little boot. And this is a very silly little dress. And these are absolutely enormous pants.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: You got a boyfriend? A real one? I have, and he's perfect. I hope he's good enough for our little Bridget.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: I'm king of the world.
I think I can say with total Confidence. Absolutely not.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Bridget. Just wanton sex goddess with a very bad man between her thighs. Mum.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: Bridget Jones Diary is a 2001 film directed by Sharon Maguire, known for incendiary Bridget Jones, Baby and Godmothered. Didn't have a ton of credits, but those are some of the main ones along with this movie. Obviously, it was written by Helen Fielding along with Andrew Davies, who wrote the 2011 Three Musketeers movie. Bridget, the Edge of Reason, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Or no, sorry, not the 2005 Pride and Prejudice. And then after those things, a bunch of BBC television series, including their Pride and Prejudice, their House of Cards, Middlemarch, Bleak House, War and Peace. There was like a whole list of, like, these British BBC. Like.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Do you mean the 1995 Pride and Prejudice?
[00:45:59] Speaker A: No, I believe literally, they made a. Or maybe it is the 95 one. His might have been the 95 one. What's his name again? Richard Curtis. I can't remember. No, Andrew Davies, 1995 British television drama.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: So I was gonna say, because the 1995 one is BBC.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: Not that they couldn't have done another one.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Not the 2000 whatever one.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: No, not the one we did.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: That's what I was thinking of. Sorry, he didn't do the one with Keira Knightley. He did the one from the 90s with Colin Firth, which we'll get to. Also, Richard Curtis was a final writer, known for Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love, actually. Bridget Jones, Edge of Reason, Warhorse. About time. Mamma Mia. Here we go again. Mr. Bean series. Mr. Bean's holiday, black Adder. And he wrote exactly one episode of Doctor who, but it's arguably maybe one of the best episodes of Doctor who. He wrote Vincent and the Doctor. Just fascinating.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: Arguably, yes. One of the best episodes of Doctor.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: Who, in my opinion. But, yeah, it's just fascinating. I was like, what an interesting. Like, I had no idea that. That this is such a varied. I don't know if it's that varied, I guess. But, yeah, fascinating. The film star.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: A lot of very British stuff.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. The film stars Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Celia Emery, James Faulkner, Charmion May, Paul Brooke, Felicity Montague and Shirley Henderson, among others. Has an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 66 on Metacritic and a 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb. It made $334 million against a budget of 24.5 million dollars. It was very successful. It's why they made a bunch of sequels and it was nominated for one Oscar for best actress in a leading role for Renee Zelwe. She did not win. She lost to Halle Berry in Monstrous Ball.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Oh.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Which I have not seen Monstrous Ball, but. So in 1997, Working Title Films acquired the rights to the film, apparently before the book had really even become popular. They got it early and bought the rights to it. And there aren't. I didn't get a ton of production notes, but I had to get. This is all. I always love casting stuff. So I have one big main section here about casting. Bridget Jones. And I have a list of actresses who were considered for the role other than Renee Selweger and great Helena Bonham Carter, Cate Blanchett, Emily Watson, Cameron Diaz.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Isn't she American?
[00:48:25] Speaker A: So is Renee Zellweger fair enough. Which we'll get to wait or.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought Renee Zellweger was British. Am I crazy?
[00:48:37] Speaker A: She had to do an act. No, she's American.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: Am I crazy Town?
[00:48:39] Speaker A: She's American.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: Okay, that's.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: We'll get to it. I have notes.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: Yeah, she's American.
Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette. Toni Collette turned it down because she was in a Broadway production at the time.
Kate Winslet was also considered, but they thought she was too young for the role because she was only 24 at the time. And then the last one I have here considered for the role was Rachel Weisz. But apparently, according to Wikipedia, she didn't get the role because she was considered too beautiful for the role.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: You know what? I would still put that on my resume.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Right. Too beautiful to be in this movie.
Look, I don't want to say she's too beautiful for the role because that's weird. But Rachel Weisz may be one of the most beautiful human beings on the planet. So if anybody's too beautiful for a role, it might be her.
So Renee Zellweger was cast in May 2000 after a two year search for the titular role. And Sharon Maguire, the director said about casting her, quote, I saw Renee in a gift. I saw in Renee a gift few people have that she was able to straddle comedy and emotion. And as we mentioned, Renee Zellweger is American.
So she actually had to have an accent coach to learn a British accent for the role. Her accent coach was Barbara Berkery, who also coached Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love.
Also read that Zellweger gained 20 pounds for the role and worked briefly at a London book publisher in the publicity department to kind of Study up for her role. There was some controversy over casting an American in this very, very British role.
A lot of people were like, how dare you? This is like.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: It's like our thing.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: Yeah. But supposedly after the film came out from. According to Wikipedia, her English accent, a southeastern English accent, and in general her performance were both so good that the British people embraced her as Bridget Jones is. According to Wikipedia. I don't know. My guess is that more British people just couldn't be fucked, but did not care at all.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: I think we have some British listeners, so if you listen to this one, you'll have to let us know how you feel about Renee Zellweger as British.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: And depending on how old you were at the time. Do you remember some hubbub in the early 2000s about Renee Zellweger as British Jones or as Bridget Jones?
[00:51:02] Speaker B: British Jones.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: British Jones. It's the female British counterpart to Indiana Jo.
British Jones.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: Why did he do that? Right. As I took a sip of my drink.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: I'm sorry, British Jones. I'm trying to come up with a. That belongs in a museum joke. But it about like imper.
I can't. I'll come back to it if I think of one. Anyways, filming the movie was filmed between August 2000 and November 2000.
So getting into some IMDb trivia, which is always a lot of fun, supposedly. Again, according to IMB trivia, this is the first film franchise or first movie trilogy directed exclusively by female directors, as well as the only romantic comedy trilogy of the new millennium at the time of whenever this IMDb trivia was written. That may not be the case anymore, but trying to think Mamma Mia. Has two.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: In terms of the romantic comedy, I don't know if the women directors are women or not, but yeah, I don't know. I can't think of another three.
[00:52:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I mean romantic comedies do tend to be one offs.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: They're very much films usually one offs. Yeah, it's just kind of a staple of the genre. But yeah, there may be other ones. I'm not. It's probably something I'm not thinking of. But anyways, again, who knows when that trivia note was written, right?
As you said, this was inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and specifically Colin Firth's Darcy in this film is a variation of his Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. I read both that when writing it. Helen Fielding based Darcy in this on his Darcy from the 1995 BBC.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: But that also he then because of that kind of played this like A spin on that character or something.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: It's a good thing they were able to get him.
[00:53:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. This is super fascinating to me. The director of the film, Sharon Maguire, apparently was the real life inspiration for the character of Shazza in the novel. She is a friend of Helen Fielding and her name is in the acknowledgments in the book. So I'm gonna have to go look.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: At the acknowledgments page.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: So they. Helen Fielding got her friend to direct her movie, which is fun.
This is super random, but the character Jude in the movie, played by Shirley Henderson, cries in the ladies bathrooms in the movie, apparently. And that actress also plays Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter series.
[00:53:47] Speaker B: Typecasting.
[00:53:50] Speaker A: All right, getting to some reviews. Paul Clinton for CNN said Zellweger nails Jones's London accent while simultaneously delivering her performance, bursting with power and brimming with heartfelt emotion. Mark Adams for the Hollywood Reporter also praised Zellweger's comedy in the film.
Writing for the Washington Post, Stephen Hunter said, quote, zellweger gets to show both her frantic awkwardness and her tender decency. Stephen Holden, writing for the New York Times, called the film, quote, a delicious piece of candy whose amusing package is scrawled with bon motion. Sorry, a delicious piece of candy whose amusing package is scrawled with bon mots. Distantly inspired by Jane Austen. I don't even know how to pronounce that. I assume it's French. And added, quote, Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real. It is a performance so airy, you barely sense the work that must have gone into it, end quote.
Then for Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwartzbaum wrote, quote, hugh Grant is charming, too, luxuriating in naughtiness, taking a holiday from his usual floppy, velvet romantic image as Bridget's caddish boss, Daniel Cleaver. She also praised Firth, Colin Firth, saying, quote, he's the complete Darcy and he never wavers. There's no sentimentality, no flirtation with the audience, no final moment of pandering to the niceness. Gods, he's a cold geek all the way through.
Some critics did have some negative things to in terms of the adaptation.
Clinton, which was one of the earlier critics I mentioned, I can't. Paul Clinton for CNN wrote, quote, much of Fielding's irony. Sorry, the screenplay loses much of Fielding's irony, nuance and cynicism. And while the writers have captured Fielding's sparking rhythm with words, they've created a bit of havoc with the plotline. Schwartzbaum, although giving the film a positive review, said, quote, the mess, though, where's the mess? The hysteria, the middle of the night, jitters of loneliness. The mess of Bridget's life in the book has been tidied, neatened into little piles of mirth and gaiety. The movie never shows us anything about Bridget that's remotely in need of psychological or. Or physical fixing. End quote. Right. Felicia Feaster, writing for Creative Loathing. Loafing, Loafing, said, quote, Bridget's why can't I find a husband? Lament becomes tiresome and, quote, caters to women's lowest expectations and suggests that even the modern, liberated woman is a Doris Day club case. End quote. But for Salon, Stephanie Zacharik said that the film is an improvement on the novel. And then, finally, writing for the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: Saying, quote, it is made against all odds into a funny and charming movie that understands the charm of the original and preserves it. End quote. So he thought he had read the book, I guess.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: I guess so.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: And thought that the movie was a good adaptation. So, as always, you can do us a giant favor. Head over to Facebook, Instagram, threads, Goodreads, Blue sky, any of those places. Interact. We'd love to hear from you. You can also write us a nice little review on any of the platforms you're following us. And you can Support us on
[email protected] ThisFilmIsLit. If you support us, for 15 bucks a month, you get access to priority recommendations. And Katie, this was a priority recommendation from.
[00:57:18] Speaker B: This was from Mathilde.
[00:57:20] Speaker A: Mathilde. Thank you, Mathilde.
Looking forward to talking about Bridget Jones Diary. Katie, where can people watch it?
[00:57:27] Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or a local video rental store if you still have one. Other than that, you can stream this with a subscription to HBO Max, or you can rent it for around 4 bucks from Amazon, YouTube, Fandango at home, or Spectrum.
[00:57:46] Speaker A: Awesome. There you go.
I've never. Have you seen this movie? No, because I know you said you hadn't read the book. I just wasn't sure if you had seen the movie.
[00:57:54] Speaker B: No, again, I literally know nothing about it other than that it's infamous for fat shaming.
[00:57:59] Speaker A: Right?
[00:57:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's literally all I know.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Yep, same page. We're going in on equal footing on this one because that is also the literal only thing I know about this movie. So, yeah, that'll be. That'll be interesting. But I'm interested to see how it.
How it feels. If it. If it holds up in some. Maybe it'll. Maybe it'll hold up in a way we weren't expecting.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: Perhaps. Perhaps something like Legally Blonde or something like that.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: It'll be very interesting. Come back in one week's time. We're talking about Bridget Jones Diary. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals. Everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching.
[00:58:32] Speaker B: Movies and keep being awesome.
