The world is full of thirtysomething single women pining for love, chocolate and a cheap and painless cure for cellulite. Bridget Jones had a word for them - competition. This weekend there were nearly half a million fewer on the singles scene: they were flocking to see their heroine make her big screen debut.
And so it came to pass that Bridget Jones's Diary, the most hyped and eagerly anticipated British film for years, broke all cinema box office records for a domestic film on its opening weekend. Good reviews, the hilarious pony club English accent of the American star, Renée Zellweger, and a massive marketing push helped push it close to the £7m mark.
Even if you subtract the takings from preview screenings (included in the £7m) - a nifty piece of cosmetic surgery used to make movies seem more successful than they really are - the film version of Helen Fielding's cult paean to the consoling qualities of cigarettes and Chardonnay did v.v.g. Its three day box office of £5.72m easily surpassed the first three days' takings of Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral, both penned by Fielding's ex, Richard Curtis.
Such a performance puts it in the same league as Titanic, Men in Black, and Independence Day, an unheard of achievement for what industry insiders call a "chick flick". Although its £7.8m gross only managed to get it to number three in the American chart behind Spy Kids, and Morgan Freeman's Along Came the Spider, its takings per screen bettered both.
Robert Mitchell, of Screen International magazine, said it was another triumph for the London production firm Working Title, run by Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, who, he said, could "teach the Americans a thing or two about making mainstream hits".
According to the entertainment site People News about 60% of the audiences were said to be women and rather frighteningly, were said to have been flocking to the cinemas in packs. Furthermore, the film's distributors said that the audiences were made up of a large age sweep, ranging from 18 to early 50s.
The film's distributors, Miramax, who initially decided to launch the film on only 1,600 screens (half the number of some of the big American blockbusters) have added another 400 cinemas to their distribution list in the wake of the film's phenomenal success.
• Guardian review by Peter Bradshaw
• Observer review by Philip French
