Director – Michael Morris – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 124m
*****
Following the death of her husband, Bridget must carry on raising her kids even as she restarts her career and attempts to find love, sex and romance once again – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, February 13th
The character of Bridget Jones first burst onto cinema screens in Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001) in what turned out to be a hugely successful adaptation of a hugely successful publishing phenomenon. The book spawned three more volumes, and the film spawned adaptations of them. For reasons best known to the producers, they skipped the third published book Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy to film the fourth one, Bridget Jones’ Baby, as the third movie.
The reason may be that Mad about the Boy is set following the death of the heroine’s beloved husband, a top human rights lawyer, making her not the single woman of the first film, but a widow navigating not just life, with all its ups and downs, but grief, which doesn’t sound like a great premise for a comedy. The script, co-written like its three predecessors by author Helen Felding, doesn’t shirk this difficult subject either. Just like bereaved people everywhere, Bridget (Renée Zellweger) keeps seeing her object of loss, husband Darcy (Colin Firth) everywhere. They had a good relationship while he was alive, and he remains a reassuring, comforting presence.
Without him, she is left with all the challenges of being a single parent mum, even if she adores her two children, 10-year-old Billy (Caper Knopf) and 6-year-old Mabel (Mila Jancovic). She is surrounded by characters from the earlier films. Some, like former lover Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and her gynecologist Dr. Rawlins (Emma Thompson) get quite a bit of screen time, allowing the actors to develop their characters. Also worthy of note is Nico Parker as a newly-hired, unflappable and extremely competent twentysomething nanny. Others, like her peer group of Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (James Callis), feature in ensemble scenes where the individual characters barely get a look in.
As Bridget goes back to work as a television producer, she becomes involved with underthirtysomething toy boy Roxster (Leo Woodall), a Hampstead Heath park attendant who just happens to turn up when she becomes trapped in a tree rescuing her kids. His presence upstages her kids’ primary school teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who she will later get to know when she volunteers to help out on a school cross-country trip. It’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen; the romance with the toy boy is going to fizzle out because of age difference, while you hope that true romance will blossom with the teacher – the perfect man who she can’t see despite his standing right in front of her. For good measure, the script throws in Nicolette (Leila Farzad), the perfect mum at Bridget’s kids’ school, whose presence brings out Bridget’s inadequacies (at least, as Bridget herself perceives them).
The film is brilliantly edited to just over the two-hour mark. It has a feel about it which I can’t recall seeing in many movies, that a lot of material has been pulled out – possibly great material because what has been left in the final edit is uniformly impressive – and one is left believing that the film could either be trimmed further or could have been left at a much longer length. In this case, it seems to come down to, how long should the film be? Editor Mark Day (or the producers) may well have judged the edit right, because as it stands, the film never outstays its welcome.
Director Michael Morris, incidentally the first man to helm a Bridget Jones film, appears to be a very good choice for this material. He seems to understand the central character, and he knows how to get the best out of his actors. He doesn’t soft soap the grief side of the story, yet, this new instalment, like the original film, seems to connect with the way women struggle to get through the challenges presented by modern life.
The other asset the Bridget Jones films have, and it can’t be understated, is their lead actress Zellweger. She once again demonstrates her complete understanding of the eponymous character, and one wonders whether, had a different actress been cast in the original film, the franchise would have kept going for another three. And not just kept going, either, because this new film is as good as the very first one, if not better.
Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy is out in cinemas in the UK on Thursday, February 13th.
Trailer: