A case of ill-advised expansionism, not so much (or not just) in the sense of Renée Zellweger packing the pounds back on (without polishing up her English accent), but in the sense of a modestly profitable corner cookie store envisioning itself as the next Mrs. Fields. Granted, it's well within the realm of reason that life, for Helen Fielding's self-deprecating heroine, does not run smoothly into the sunset: "Another year, a brand-new diary." It runs instead in circles -- she keeps on being an insanely possessive idiot, and her prize catch of a boyfriend keeps on being big about it -- till she spirals off on a tangent that takes her over the edge and into a Thai prison for drug smuggling. A tacit admission, that, of the depletion of the material. Though it's too late by then to return to reason, it's never too late to return to convention: a climactic crosstown dash (staple of romantic comedies) in three distinct stages, to four different pop songs. The new director, Beeban Kidron, is a more experienced hand than Sharon Maguire on the first film, but the experiences have tended to be sullying ones: Used People and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Like her predecessor, she provides a feminine touch only to the extent that the proverbial bull in the china shop might well be a cow. Some of the uniformly anemic images are strangely grainy into the bargain, as if sections of long shots or medium shots had been marked off and blown up into closer shots. Colin Firth and Hugh Grant -- the rock and the hard-on -- have come back to do their respective things, with half a heart each. Jacinda Barrett, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd