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‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ Movie Review: Drama Without the Debauchery… She's All Grown Up
In Bridget Jones' fourth film outing, the tone feels darker and the themes are more complex; the humour comes with a side of grief while the drama comes without its usual dose of debauchery.
Director: Michael Morris
Writers: Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, Abi Morgan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Isla Fisher with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant
Language: English
Bridget Jones is back — older, wiser, and clumsier than ever. It’s been almost a decade since we’ve last seen this lovable mess of a woman trying to ‘settle down’. In the first movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), the then 32-year-old sat across a dining table full of couples interrogating her about being single. And now, in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, she’s found her way back there — 20 years, two babies, and one husband later.
Michael Morris’ take on the Bridget Jones franchise has long been criticised for being anti-feminist, propagating outdated notions of marriage and body image. Sure, Bridget spends a lot of time obsessing over her weight, a little controversial in today’s day and age. But here’s the thing: I first watched Bridget Jones’ Diary when I was 10, and unlike most rom-coms of that time — Clueless (1995), The Princess Diaries (2001), She’s All That (1999) —Bridget was the only protagonist who didn’t undergo a makeover to find love. In fact, when Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) first confessed his love to her, he specified that he liked her just the way she was.
Unfortunately in this fourth, and perhaps final film of the franchise, she’s not quite the woman she was.
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Zellweger’s portrayal of the chaotic yet charismatic Bridget is reduced to a tamed-down caricature of her old self, down to the exaggerated waddle walk. With none of her signature dramatic exits, inappropriate Hitler jokes, digs at Ed Sheeran or frankly, even shots of her simply smoking.
Hugh Grant, however, having — quite literally — risen from the dead, absolutely steals the show. Now the fun uncle to Bridget’s two kids — Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic) — he’s everything the younger Daniel Cleaver had the potential to be. And sadly, (spoiler alert), while Mark Darcy (Collin Firth), is reported to have died, ever-so heroically on a humanitarian mission in Sudan, he still comes on screen as part of Bridget’s hallucination.
But what one loves about the Bridget Jones franchise is their commitment to continuity. Daniel still cracks jokes about Bridget’s skirt, her fridge is still empty, and she still never bothers brushing her hair. In a particular scene, she even mistakes her Netflix password to be ‘All By Myself’ — the Céline Dion song that opened the first film.
But this time, something’s different; the tone feels darker and the themes are more complex. The humour comes with a side of grief while the drama comes without its usual dose of debauchery. She doesn’t run across London in her leopard-print underwear anymore, because Bridget Jones is now officially a... grown-up.
Despite that, of course, she’s still caught between two men, the 29-year-old “Toy Boy” Roxter (Leo Woodall) and science teacher M. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). On one hand, the older-woman-younger-man trope has been done to death in recent rom-coms such as A Family Affair and The Idea of You, and on the other, there is absolutely zero chemistry between either of them. Wallaker’s climactic confession using Newton’s third law falls entirely flat; the action did have an equal and opposite reaction… it just wasn’t a very pleasant one.
But it’s not all bad, as the ensemble cast still keep the movie ticking. Emma Thompson returns as the endearing doctor, along with Sally Phillips as Shazzer, Shirley Henderson as Jude, and James Callis as Tom. Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent also bring warmth as Bridget’s parents, bringing back some good-old fashioned rom-com humour. Bridget too returns to her job as a television producer and is welcomed back with open arms and no interview, obviously.
One thing director Morris nails, though, is capturing the interpersonal relationships between women. For instance, the new babysitter, Chloe (Nico Parker) — a gorgeous, young, talented woman who Bridget feels insecure around — takes a pin out of her own hair and puts it in Bridget’s.
Not to mention, Bridget now navigates through the grief of losing Mark, as well as helping her children cope with the loss of their father, and that’s where the film truly thrives. The standout moment is Billy singing the song Mark once sang to him, soon after they write letters and send them off with balloons. The boy's general demeanour and mannerisms almost mirror that of his father's... that’s your cue to grab some tissues. Throughout the film, there’s also a white owl watching over them — a symbol, in many cultures, of a loved one who’s passed, adding a subtle yet touching layer to their journey of loss and healing.
“You can live at the same time as all the things you’ve lost,” says Bridget in an eloquent culmination to a movie that’s perhaps not the best of the franchise, but a fitting end nonetheless.