This is a nice funny movie but in order to enjoy it fully, you need to forget the whole Renee Zellwegger accent thing. I had heard, and possibly bought into, all the propaganda that she had adopted a good English accent as well as gaining 25 pounds for the part of Bridget Jones. Well, not exactly. But, she did a good job of gaining weight and she looks the part.   To be kind, I would say that her accent is somewhat mid-Atlantic.  Anyway, maybe they should have done what High Fidelity did when they wanted John Cusack to star in it and moved the setting to Chicago from London. But then we would have missed Hugh Grant, the dreamy Colin Firth and a whole slew of British character actors who populate Bridget Jone's Diary.  As you probably already know, this movie doesn't exactly break new ground.  This is the story of Bridget Jones (Renee Zellwegger) who is slightly overweight, thirty-two years old and single.  As such, she feels strange and different (I can identify with this) and determines to change her life, i.e., lose weight, stop smoking, date nice guys.  Of course, attaining any of these three goals proves difficult.  In order, to focus better on improving her life, Bridget starts writing a diary which, in the film, recedes to a minor plot device.  Enter the diametrically opposed  men in her life, Daniel (Hugh Grant) who is her boss and is, well, Hugh Grant and Mark (Colin Firth) who is, well, a nice guy.  You can guess how the plot flows from this and if there's a weakness in this movie, besides Zellwegger's accent, it's in the unimaginative plotline.  I was a bit worried 20 minutes into the movie that this would lead to boredom on my part. But knowing my bad rep as far as comedies go, I was determined to remain focussed and give myself a chance to like this movie.  It worked!  It turned out that, despite knowing what was going to happen from the moment the opening credits rolled, the wonderful British cast plus Zellwegger combine to make Bridget Jone's Diary a very funny and cute film.  Zellwegger, herself, is perfect for this role and does a very good job with it.  Hugh Grant, luckily for him, gets to play Hugh Grant which he does very well.  Colin Firth, who first impinged upon the North American audience playing Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, plays another, similar ``Mr. Darcy" in Bridget Jone's Diary.  He is perhaps best known now for his roles in Shakespeare in Love and The English Patient.  Familiar faces in the cast include Honor Blackman (Still revered as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger).  Gemma Jones (known to fans of Masterpiece Theatre as The Duchess of Duke Street) and Jim Broadbent (Gilbert in Topsy Turvy) provide a side plot as Bridget's parents who are have their own relationship problems.  Broadbent, in particular, does a very good job.  Zellwegger has a nice chemistry with both Firth and Grant as she bounces back and forth between them during this year in her life.  There are quite a few scenes that caused the audience to laugh out loud.  And then, there were also quite a few other scenes where I laughed out loud.  Finally,  you have to like a movie where Hugh Grant gets beaten to a pulp for being a cad.