‘Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy’ Review

Bridget Jones is back, and she’s bringing her entire roster of side characters from the rest of the franchise back for its new entry (aside from Patrick Dempsey, but he was only a one-film replacement anyway). Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy sees Bridget up against overarching grief following the death of her husband, Mark Darcy, leaving her a widow.

This presents an interesting shift in the franchise, considering Darcy has been a constant in the trilogy and an integral character to these movies, so losing him would presumably be of detriment to this fourth entry. However, it is not a negative as the film plays the right notes, and his spirit is felt even when he’s not explicitly on-screen.

As it’s the fourth movie, naturally, the creatives behind the cameras want to shake things up and find ways to keep people interested in coming back for another movie that appears different enough from the other, and they succeed in doing that. The movie has an almost perfect balance of maintaining the familiar whilst also bringing in fresh ideas and modernizing this world, including scenes that feature Tinder conversations and age-gap controversies. Thankfully, instead of becoming a film at war with its own concept, it embraces this and actually confronts interesting concerns about getting older and being in a relationship with someone younger. 

As always, there are two love interests for Bridget in this movie, but it feels like a very different movie depending on the man she is with, and for the first half of the runtime, it seems as if they can never get the right mixture of tone or make the plot engaging enough but after a pivotal relationship breakthrough in the middle of the movie, it flips around and becomes something that actually grabs right onto your heart and forces you to contemplate extreme and confronting feelings that you wouldn’t expect from a Bridget Jones movie. Whilst it has all the typical hits of comedy and is surprisingly funny despite the film doing its best to convince you that it might not be, it is the conversations surrounding grief and the impact that it has on the main family that create a personal connection with the audience and grounds it immediately.

Of course, everyone’s favorites, Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant, are back. Grant notoriously skipped appearing in the third, but a newspaper article at the end of the movie left the fate of his character open, leaving room for him to reappear as he does here. Hugh Grant is absolutely one of the stars of this and every other Bridget Jones movie he is in – his sarcasm and charm are palpable, and you can’t help but enjoy him every time he is on screen, even if not everything he is saying would be approved by HR. His relationship with Bridget is also the best, as it has greatly evolved over the franchise, and now he is not a love interest but a family friend. Though it’s clear that the attraction is still there, they’re both over it. He goes on his own side journey in the movie, and according to Zellweger, Grant wrote the majority of his lines or improvised them on several occasions, and that feels evident when watching the movie as his scenes are incredibly organic and unravel naturally. Nothing about these feels rehearsed or stilted.

Undoubtedly, the core of the movie is Bridget’s family and her children. This does lead to some awkward and unnatural moments as the kid actors aren’t the greatest, and there are a lot of ‘random dancing’ scenes – I’m all for dancing in cinema for no reason, but there are a few scenes that seem thrown in to prove that this is a family that gets along, but that’s better evidenced in scenes of them actually doing real things together. The son, in particular, played by Casper Knopf, had one scene that involved him singing a song that had the whole audience in tears. And don’t worry, even though she’s a mom now, Bridget still gets up to her usual hijinks and sexual mischiefs – there’s still plenty of romance in this movie, and how she deals with that ties right back to the core theme of the movie which is legacy and moving on. Jones is struggling to deal with raising children and wanting a fresh romance whilst still honoring her late husband. The scenes she shares with her children, where she is open about missing him and reflecting by herself, are some of the best in the movie.

Having the plot in writing makes it sound better than it appeared in the movie. A lot of scenes were elongated and went on for too long, and the jokes didn’t always land, but when they did, they were good. There is nothing particularly interesting about any of her relationships in the movie,e and the scenes with Leo Woodall are easily the worst in the movie as they attempt to lean into the sexy and funny sides of the age gap and modern online dating, but it never feels warranted or interesting enough to actually care about. Similarly, though she shares a lot of great and actually caring scenes with Chiwetel Ejiofor, their relationship is very forced and rushed. Their conclusion is only reached because the movie is coming to an end, and a happy ending is needed to wrap everything back together. As well as this, Bridget’s group of friends are just unbearable, and every time they are on screen, the movie is massively unfunny and loses the audience as it feels like that’s when they are actively trying to make you laugh and forcing fake chemistry on the viewer. Whenever it cut to her meeting them or them talking about something, everyone was eagerly awaiting for literally anything else to happen.

The film is good, but not great. It’s at its best when Renée is allowed to tap into her other emotions, and the film becomes about the exploration of grief and less about saying ‘sex’ and ‘fuck’ as many times as you can. Hugh Grant is the star of the supporting cast, but Bridget’s children make it hit harder and make it easier to relate to Bridget, with the children presenting interesting and relatable challenges but also allowing a deeper look at the character and what fuels people every day. A special mention for Nico Parker, who isn’t anything special but plays her small role very well and comes away as a memorable character who creates an interesting dichotomy to Bridget and,d despite her small amount of screen time, is someone who was being spoken about a while after the film ended.

The second half of the film is its best, and there are some very interesting ideas here that are allowed to be played out for a few scenes but neutralized in favor of unfunny jokes and more boring storylines for the majority of the runtime. An enjoyable time that might even make you upset and cause some reflection, but nothing you’ll remember in a few months time. 

It’s also worth noting that Renée Zellweger is a very good actress, and her presence in films is sorely missed. Hopefully, this movie will encourage her to return to the cinema, and she will appear in more movies in the near future. It is never in question who rules this franchise, and it is her portrayal as Bridget Jones that has kept the movies so iconic and successful.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is directed by Michael Morris and stars Renee Zellweger, Leo Woodall, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent, Nico Parker, Colin Firth, Casper Knopf, Mila Jankovic, Sally Phillips and more. Produced by Eric Fellner, Jo Wallett, and Tim Bevan.