Sometimes hit movies are more than just crowd-pleasing entertainment.

They strike a nerve in our collective unconscious, and their success tells us something about the direction of contemporary culture.

Everyone is talking about Bridget Jones's Diary. The New York Times’ top political commentator, Maureen Dowd, took time off from bashing George W. Bush to devote an entire column to it, and Vogue magazine put the movie's star, Renee Zellweger, on its cover. Money can't buy this kind of free publicity. There's got to be a buzz.

Originally a London newspaper column by Helen Fielding, the story was expanded into a novel and a sequel which have sold five million copies in 32 countries. Its film adaptation has been the number one movie in America for several weeks and its heroine, an unmarried 32-year-old career woman, is being heralded as an everywoman for our time.

The book openly borrowed its key characters and much of its plot from Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, and the movie's director, Sharon McGuire, continues the conceit by hiring both a male lead (Colin Firth) and a co-writer (Andrew Davies) from a recent BBC production of that early 19th-century classic. But the differences between Austen's book and Bridget are more revealing than the similarities.

The strict moral and social codes of Austen's rural gentry contrast vividly with the free-wheeling, trendy behavior of the movie's present-day urban strivers. The film-makers and many contemporary viewers assume that most of the changes are a great leap forward. Those who still see some merit in traditional values may think otherwise.

Pride and Prejudice is a witty satire about a middle-class mother's attempts to marry off her daughters, who have no dowry. Lizzie, the eldest, is an outspoken, free-thinking woman who initially rejects the marriage proposal of the aristocratic Darcy because he seems too snobbish and proud. Lydia, a younger sibling, is a flirt who elopes with Wickham, a charming army officer who turns out to be a scoundrel. The message is that first impressions can be deceiving.

The filmmakers concoct their version of Austen's message and model their female lead on Lizzie, creating a romantic triangle between her and their re-creations of Darcy and Wickham to spice things up. Their story centers on the adventures of a publicity assistant in a posh London publishing house named Bridget Jones (Zellweger).

Against her better judgment, Bridget gets involved with her handsome boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who's got a great sense of humor. In the process, she gives the cold shoulder to the man whom her mother has tried to fix her up with, a seemingly uptight lawyer named Mark Darcy (Firth). The filmmakers craft a series of comic complications around this situation with some well-timed physical gags.

Female audiences root for Bridget because she isn't a feminist superwoman who has it all. Like Austen's heroine, her main goal is to find an acceptable mate who will treat her as an equal. But Bridget's notions of equality have been influenced by a pop-culture variation of feminism. They hinge on an understanding of female empowerment that stresses self-fulfillment above all else, and that process includes the same right to complete sexual freedom that Bridget and her friends believe men enjoy.

The filmmakers have little nostalgia for Austen's world and, in fact, want to push things further in the other direction. A key set piece is the “Tarts and Vicars Ball,” a raunchy party where the women are meant to dress up as prostitutes and the men as priests or bishops. The scene sets out to tweak organized religion in a supposedly harmless manner, but ends up revealing the filmmakers’ rejection of any notion of moral authority.

That point of view is consistent with the movie's ideas about personal freedom, and the consequences are an implicit rejection of virtue, faith and family. “Having children isn't all it's cracked up to be,” Bridget's middle-aged mother (Gemma Jones) remarks before she leaves Bridget's father (Jim Broadbent) to have a fling with a TV shopping-channel host (Patrick Barlow).

As Bridget tries to sort out her own love life, her main source of comfort and support is “her urban family.” They, of course, aren't blood relatives. That would be too Jane Austen. Instead they're a pair of single thirtysomething career women like herself (Shirley Henderson and Sally Phillips) and their obligatory male gay sidekick (James Callis), who was briefly a successful pop singer in the ‘80s.

The protagonists in the movie have moral aspirations that are 180 degrees away from their equivalents in Austen's novel. In Pride and Prejudice everyone wants to be perceived as either a “lady of character” or a “man of honor.” Such concepts would be considered archaic and restrictive in contemporary London.

In both the movie and Austen's novel, Darcy wins the heroine's heart through an unexpected display of charity. In Bridget, he does so to advance her career. In Pride and Prejudice, the motive is to save her family's honor. The latter reflects Austen's belief in the necessity of a social system that's based on valuing moral principles above selfish desires. The movie, being very much of our time, upholds the reverse, and Bridget Jones pays the price.

Despite a freedom of lifestyle and career choice unimaginable in Austen's time, our 21st-century everywoman is dissatisfied. She has no center. Her solution is decidedly retro: She wants to find Mr. Right. In this, the movie skillfully mirrors the contradictions of those in our professional classes who embrace the moral relativism that's currently in fashion.

Arts & culture correspondent

John Prizer writes from Los Angeles.