Warning: spoilers

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is an embarrassment to women, especially straight women, and then lesbians are dragged into the mess just for good measure. To call this sequel crap would be an insult to perfectly good fertilizer.

The Edge of Reason is about the further adventures of Ms. Jones (Renee Zellweger), her boobs, and her boyfriend. I kid you not: the first half hour is a plotless slog with about 70 shots of her breasts and her mentioning her boyfriend about 43 times.

I’ve had that kind of friend, the one who hasn’t dated in a while so once they are with someone all they talk about is “my girlfriend this” and “my girlfriend that.” For Pete’s sake, it’s trying when I know the person and they're buying me drinks--I don’t want to pay to watch that kind of juvenile giddy yapping from someone not plying me with alcohol. And this is the straight equivalent, which makes it even more boring and irritating.

So Bridget has gotten together with Marc Darcy (Colin Firth) and is smitten by her new man, but she as she gets to know him, she begins to feel that they are not as well suited for each other as she originally thought. Due to some bad influences and her own insecurities, Bridget begins to believe that Marc is interested in his colleague/assistant (it’s never really made clear), Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett). Rebecca appears to dote on him and is everything Bridget isn’t--tall, leggy, confident, with luxurious dark hair that is well-kept. So neurotic, chubby (well, as chubby as Zellweger can get) Bridget panics just in time to get an assignment in Thailand with her former boss and paramour Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).

From here the movie goes from being a boring straight relationship story, to a stupid rip-off of Brokedown Palace: the awkward girls are seduced while on vacation in Thailand, and then unsuspectingly try to pack home gifts from their new “boyfriend” loaded with drugs. Apparently, that’s just what women do when they go to Thailand. When Bridget ends up in jail, she organizes impromptu karaoke night while waiting for her inept local attorney to spring her.

By this point I'm wondering why I am reviewing this movie: there's no forced lesbianism going on in jail. None of the two dimensional supporting characters seemed gay, except for Bridget’s guy friend.

Clearly, this movie was headed for a lesbian surprise.

The writers apparently had reached the point that they needed a quick and easy way to produce a happy ending--enter the "gay twist." I hope it doesn’t spoil the surprise, but it isn’t Bridget. And by the time this idiotic plot twist (and I use "plot" loosely), is revealed, the viewer barely cares.

If you want to fast forward, there is a PG-13 girl-on-girl kiss at the end of the movie that includes the mandatory man in the background gawking in disbelief and speechless wonder. Yes, the movie even manages to reinforce the idea of lesbian intimacy as just another available offering on the straight male sexual menu (which begs the question: if two women kiss and there are no men to see it, did it really happen?).

I can say a couple of positive things about this waste of celluloid: it has a really good soundtrack; the scene when Bridget does mushrooms in Thailand is fairly charming; and the bitchy, mean-spirited comments made by Bridget's British co-workers were so on the money they made me miss London for a quick second. The rest of the production is full of unrealized comedic ambition accentuated by half-hearted and primitive visual effects that look as dated as Ally McBeal’s dancing baby.

I hope that no one reading this ran out to buy a copy Tuesday, since it should be on network television by next Christmas. And really, we should be paid to watch it.