Sharon Maguire can make a heroine look foolish without asking us to stop liking her. We rate her comic timing and her faith in actors, though the writing can push the embarrassment further than it needs to.
Fi1m perspective
In Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Bridget's confidence grows just long enough for Sharon Maguire to cut it short. The joke depends on how much time she gives Bridget to believe things might go well, and how quickly that hope is interrupted. This is what we value in her direction: she times the embarrassment carefully without forgetting why we care about the woman. Renée Zellweger's Bridget moved us more than we expected, because she understands her mistakes and still cannot reliably stop herself making them.
Maguire came to that feature debut after documentaries and commercials, and her interest in believable behaviour suits an adaptation of Helen Fielding's novel. Incendiary (2008), which she directed and co-wrote, took her into drama. That move into serious material drew criticism for implausible plotting and melodrama. She returned to Bridget with Bridget Jones's Baby (2016), now following a fortysomething heroine. Godmothered (2020) took her towards family comedy and fairy-tale conventions, but the first Bridget remains our starting point for understanding what she does well.
On Bridget Jones's Diary, editor Martin Walsh is a crucial partner: he and Maguire know when to stop a joke. They allow anticipation to grow, then make the cut sudden enough for Zellweger's response to carry the laugh. Hugh Grant supplies the mischief, while Zellweger makes the heroine's determination to improve herself worth taking seriously. We are less convinced by the passages that ask farce to become romantic tenderness. Patrick Doyle's music makes those changes gentler, but sometimes presses for a feeling the performances have already earned.
Our enthusiasm for Maguire rests chiefly on how well she understands Bridget's attempts to improve herself. The reservation is how readily she lets a screenplay turn that struggle into another occasion for embarrassment. Zellweger makes Bridget worth spending time with before the jokes have done their work, so the extra insistence on her foolishness can feel unnecessary. Begin with Bridget Jones's Diary, provided a few awkward shifts of mood will not spoil a well-acted romantic comedy.
Biography
Sharon Maguire is an English film and television director. She is best known for directing the romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), based on the novel by her friend Helen Fielding, in which one of the characters is reportedly modelled on Maguire. She returned to the franchise to direct Bridget Jones's Baby (2016).
Maguire began her career in television as a researcher and director on programmes including Channel 4's The Media Show and BBC's The Late Show. She directed documentaries for BBC series such as Omnibus and Bookmark before moving into commercials. Bridget Jones's Diary was her feature directorial debut. Her other films include Incendiary (2008), which she also wrote, Godmothered (2020) and the television film segment in Call Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013). In 2016 she co-founded the production company 7 Stories.
