Bridget Jones is back and ‘Mad About the Boy’
With hindsight, the Bridget Jones movies have not aged well. Red flags everywhere, clunky editing, and you’d be hard-pressed to find redeeming qualities in its main character. But the movies proved popular, enough for a sequel to come three years after the first (set only six weeks after the first movie!), and then another addition 12 years after that (slightly funnier this time, with the addition of Emma Thompson both onscreen and as co-screenwriter).
Now, nine years since we last saw her, she’s back at it with “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” whipping out a new diary but with some markedly different circumstances. The most jarring change is that Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) is dead, leaving Bridget a widow and single mum to their two kids. Now, this is not a spoiler; it’s in the trailer and is basically the first thing the movie tells you. He died four years ago, he’s (somewhat) haunting them still, and this is the status quo that is soon to be upset by “The Boy” of the title.
Moving on
Bridget realizes it’s time to “move on” and put herself back out there. Her friends have made her a Tinder account, but there’s room in her universe for meet-cutes, as she has a new schoolteacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor, “12 Years a Slave”) and “garbologist” named Roxster (Leo Woodall, “One Day,” “The White Lotus”) all in her orbit and she encounters both within days. Roxster is the titular Boy, a 29-year-old university student who thinks Bridget is 35 (she lets him continue believing this despite being at least 53). May-December romances between older women and younger men have been Hollywood’s favorite dish recently (“Babygirl,” “The Idea of You,” “Lonely Planet,” “A Family Affair”) so this comes as no surprise. Why shouldn’t Bridget enjoy herself after such a tragic turn of events?
Grief and mourning
Darcy’s removal allows for some of the best emotional work in the franchise to emerge. With three prior movies’ worth of memories, the payload of grief and mourning gets front-loaded with ease, given further pangs with Bridget’s children, the youngest of which will not really remember her father at all. These are heady, heavy matters, and serve to ground Jones’ character, who used to float in shallower waters, usually bouncing between two men. That still happens here, but at least it’s not the most important crux of the character’s arc this time, and Zellweger gets to remind people that she has two Oscars under her belt.
Even the returning Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) has more impressive things to deal with: mortality, coming to terms with aging, and regret over being an absentee father to his son. He’s still a cad and a lech, but now he’s a cad and a lech with a heart. Emma Thompson’s gynecologist returns, a welcome presence among all the returning characters for what is ostensibly Bridget’s last outing. That these actors, including Shirley Henderson, James Callis, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Sally Phillips, and Sarah Solemani, have all been along for the ride is no small feat.
Thankfully, “Mad About the Boy” is handily the best in the franchise. Michael Morris (“To Leslie”, “Better Call Saul”) directs, with vibrant colors and some greeting–card cozy visuals, including a hike through nature that allows Ejiofor’s character Scott a chance to bond with Bridget. They finally show Bridget being competent at her job, and the romantic partnering is not the be-all end-all of the story (though it happens anyway). Though it marks the end of this franchise, “Mad About The Boy” makes sure it goes out on the right foot.
