Renée Zellweger reveals she took 'bad advice' about hiding her exhaustion

The twist in "Bridget Jones's Baby" (opening Friday) is that Bridget doesn't know if the father of the baby she's carrying is Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) or Jack (Patrick Dempsey, who replaces Hugh Grant in this third film).

While the first two films in the franchise are largely about the power of love and self acceptance, the newest offering from Bridget Jones is noticeably more developed - perhaps more emotionally mature even. Less than a fortnight later, Bridget and her ex boyfriend Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) relight the flame following a christening party.

This time around, Bridget's a little less All By Myself and a touch more Jump Around: She's lean and mean at an acceptable fighting weight and loving her job as a British news producer. Soon discovering that she is pregnant, Bridget sets out on a roller coaster journey of morning sickness, love triangles, and trying to figure out which of the two hotties is in fact her baby daddy.

Meanwhile, Maguire said that it was very hard for Bridget to choose between Mark and Jack because they are both "kind of nice guys".

The much-anticipated third installment of the Bridget Jones franchise welcomes fellow Academy Award victor Emma Thompson to the cast. He's an American tech millionaire who meets Bridget at a music festival, and feeling impulsive, she sleeps with him but leaves in the morning.

Lovable klutz Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is back.

"Everybody's hoped for something and been disappointed", she said.

"She's suffering the same things we all do and, especially in her private moments, you're able to connect to her". But her life and her problems belong in another era-one where movie heroines have sassy gay BFFs to offer advice, and one that demands a traditional resolution to Bridget's eternal quest for a "happily ever after". Bridget's turning 43 - "have I passed my sell-by date?" she muses - and her co-workers at her London news channel wheel out a cake with a small brushfire atop it. The actress has been away from the screen for six years and lately has been the subject of frightful public comments about her looks.

Though the premise of Bridget Jones's Baby makes it all seem like it's all about the guy again, it has never felt so much like Bridget's story. Directed by Sharon Maguire, from a screenplay by Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Thompson. She did volunteer work, she went back to college, she started a relationship. "It felt odd for me to read it because I had to go back 15 years to my life and look at my own fantasies and whether they had come true". Darcy's dry wit is well suited to the more grown-up Bridget Jones's Baby, and his defense of a Pussy Riot-like band pays off in delightfully droll ways.

New priorities have seen Shazzer, Jude and Tom recede from her life but Bridget's colleague, news anchor Miranda (Sarah Solemani, Him and Her), stands in as a terrific friend surrogate in the absence of Bridget's trusty chums.

"Bridget Jones's Baby", which opens in theaters September 16, rates 5 stars.