Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy review – Surprisingly moving final chapter

Watching the latest Bridget Jones movie, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Harry Potter, and not just because these franchises are both screen adaptations of famous British literary heroes. As Harry and his friends got older, the tone of their stories aged up quite noticeably as well. And the same thing happens in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, a bittersweet and surprisingly dramatic tale about what happens after the “happily ever after” dreams of youth.

Adapted by Helen Fielding from her own novel, the fourth and final entry in the series is set several years after the events of 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby, in which Renee Zellweger’s titular gawky lead finally married the love of her life, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), after much comedic kerfuffling to discover that he was indeed the father of her unborn child. Now, said child, Billy (Casper Knopf), is a young adolescent, and he has a precocious five-year old sister, Mabel (Mila Jankovic). Yes, Bridget Jones has her own family now, with all the homely middle-aged chaos that goes with it. Except there’s a huge piece missing.

As we learn in the film’s opening moments, human rights lawyer Mark was killed four years earlier while on a humanitarian aid mission in Sudan. Even with Mark’s fate not being treated as a surprise at all in the film’s marketing, director Michael Morris still manages to make its reveal an emotional gut punch of note, the first of many dealt throughout the two-hour-plus runtime. Keep the tissues close at hand for this one as Mad About the Boy offers several deeply moving ruminations on grief. Aided by a mostly top-form Zellweger (more on that later) and fantastic turns from the young child actors, what would normally be considered emotionally manipulative arm-wringing, instead becomes bittersweet moments of acceptance and personal growth that’s far removed from your typical whimsical rom-com fare.

Not that there isn’t a lot of whimsical rom-com fare to be found here as well. This is a Bridget Jones movie after all! As former flame and perennial womanizer Daniel Carver (Hugh Grant) points out to Bridget, after four years of sobbing in her pajamas, she’s “effectively a nun”. Encouraged by Daniel, her group of lifelong friends Shazzer, Tom, and Jude, (Sally Phillips, James Callis, Shirley Henderson), as well as her hilariously acerbic gynaecologist Dr Rawlings (Emma Thompson) and ex-colleague Miranda (Sarah Soleimani), Bridget starts getting her life back on track by returning to her old TV producer job and entering the dating scene.

Well, “climbing up” the dating scene would be more accurate as Bridget inadvertently finds herself stuck in a tree while out with her kids, prompting a rescue from local park ranger Roxter (Lou Woodall). Despite being several years her junior, the hunky Roxter pursues Bridget on Tinder, and soon the pair find themselves enjoying a hot and steamy summer romance, despite the ever-present age gap which is often played up for riotous laughs. Unlike her hilariously envious peers, the introduction of a “new daddy” doesn’t go down very well with Billy though, who is very much his father’s son, including his penchant for suppressing emotions.

Luckily, Bridget’s personal “rebrand” also sees her getting more involved in Billy’s various social activities at his prep school. This is much to both the appreciation and annoyance of new science teacher Scott Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who welcomes the parental engagement but finds his rigidly scientific approach to everything (not to mention his militaristic usage of a whistle to corral schoolchildren) being the exact opposite of Bridget’s more manic and emotionally driven stylings.

And if you can’t quite work out how all of this eventually plays out, then this must be your first romantic comedy. Because despite all the teary-eyed drama colouring outside the lines, Mad About the Boy still stays true to various predictable genre trappings. Weirdly, these bits, the same ones that kicked off this franchise 24 years ago with Bridget Jones’s Diary, are inconsistent in their success rate. There’s some great character work done here (I love Daniel now having the role of being Billy and Mabel’s favourite – and very inappropriate – uncle), but some romantic arcs feel rushed and undercooked, even though the film’s runtime is a bit on the longer side for these things. Zellweger has also turned up the dial quite a bit on Bridget’s quirkiness, complete with an awful lot of squinting and a new penguin-like walk. It’s never explained why she’s become so extra socially awkward and in a few places these new tics almost threaten to distract from the scenes at hand.

However, it’s to the credit of the overall great work from the filmmakers and actors involved (special mention to the charming Woodall, who seems poised to break out big after this), that these stumbles are definitely not what stays with you after the credits roll. It’s also not the gags, as side-splitting some of them are, or the bubbly squee-inducing romance either. It’s the moments of familial tenderness, heartbreaking in their beauty, and the mature handling of loss, that left even gruff old me a soggy mess. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is never a gloomy downer though. Just like Bridget herself, the film has a good cathartic cry and gets deep into its emotions… but also knows how to jump up on the bed and dance to the music with joy. 

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is currently in South African cinemas, having released on 14 February.