When I was growing up, there were two prevailing sterotypes of
England: Swingin' England, and Poor Old Britain. In the first case, everybody that was anybody was young, carefree, thin, promiscuous, took drugs and drink without problems, and were
possessed of innate unflappability that would get them through anything. In the second, Britain was culturally and technologically backward, with a much lower comparative standard of living than America.
Bridget Jones's Diary gives the lie to both of these.
Bridget is comparatively younger than most American women would be in her state of mind: as one magazine stated "forty is the new thirty", when women start either panicking that they'll never marry or try to get serious with their lives. But she is not young, doesn't see herself as thin, and actually worries that she's drinking and smoking to excess. (Here again, Britain has different standards: three to four drinks a day are considered "normal", as opposed to America's one.) Her entire attitude towards food seems to be "Ack! I ate something!" In the days of Swinging London, this wouldn't be a problem, despite the fact that the English diet was more fattening then: she'd simply down some "blues" that would kill her appetite. While most "dolly birds" in Swinging London stories would have no trouble bedding down with at least half a dozen men, Bridget has trouble dealing with two, only one of whom she actually has sex with. Unlike most American media depicting singles, she's actually shown alone, rather than constantly in the company of friends, snoopy landlords, or kooky neighbors, who constantly barge in to ask the protagonist what they're thinking.
The other interesting fact is that British life, comparatively speaking, doesn't seem too much different than American living. Britain, after all, used to be the place where they had no central heating (in one fashion magazine from the Seventies, a small, modernistically-styled grate in the bathroom was touted as the ultimate luxury), only three TV stations, two of which were comparable to PBS, offices were Victorian catacombs (with comparable office equipment) and restaurants all seemed convinced that servers with pencil moustaches and a vaguely greasy air were a sign of swank. (Their take on Italian food, at least as late as the early Eighties, seemed particularly surreal.) Bridget's world is one of Macintoshes, her mom is a model on Home Shopping Network and lives in a home that looks like a clone of my parents', and if there is any fireplace in her flat, I can't see it.
For all that, I didn't like the movie either.