Bridget, now widowed, gets back in the dating game – and finds a much younger man.
Bridget is back, and she has become, dare I say it, slightly more sophisticated. Where once she slurped blue soup now she quaffs blue cocktails; and she has gained a beautiful Hampstead house, possibly accidentally swapped for her hairbrush.
But four years on from husband Mark Darcy’s death on a humanitarian mission to Sudan, Bridget (Renee Zellweger) still struggles to get out of her pyjamas, and is stuck in a mire of grief while their son Billy (Casper Knopf) becomes more introverted and daughter Mabel (Mila Jankovic) considers every man in the vicinity a potential new dad.
I prepared for this film in the only acceptable way, by knocking back a bottle of Chardonnay, but one of those tiny ones as once you hit 50 the formula goes three days of hangover for each drink consumed. And I weighed myself and fretted, but I do that anyway. Sadly the other vice Bridget’s diary entries were originally known for – cigs – were off limits, as modern children are miniature puritans and now mine have discovered I spent the ’90s in a haze of Silk Cut smoke they treat me like Ozzie Osbourne crossed with Bez from Happy Mondays.
This is the fourth film in the series and the fear with returning favourites – particularly British returning favourites – is always diminishing returns. Would Mad About The Boy turn out to be just another 3-star Britflick aiming for a best supporting BAFTA nom and maybe keeping our national treasures off the streets for another year? Would I be expected to laugh at a line simply because it was uttered by Emma Thompson in her schoolmarm voice? Thank god, Mad About The Boy turns out to be the real deal: sweet, touching, and often hilarious.
And while Bridget’s hairbrush-free house is chaotic in the way that only Hampstead houses are, ie perfectly tidy while its owner wanders around looking frazzled while holding a child’s football boot which has lost its pair, Bridget herself is still the epitome of mental chaos; so you just know that when her friends, ex-boss and even her gynaecologist decide it’s time for her to be dragged back into the world of the living she will create all kinds of drama and possibly fall into a cowpat. Do they get her out of her pjs? Yes! Can they get her to brush her hair? Look they have to leave something for episode 5.
Soon she has a much younger boyfriend (park ranger and “garbageologist” Roxster), and her old job as a TV producer, and even a super-efficient nanny instantly provided by her PTA frenemy (this is genteel Hampstead, where one’s nemesis only wants you to stop letting the middle class side down).
Bridget’s back-in-the-saddle first shag with Roxster (Leo Woodall) is emotional but also a hoot; the music is earnest and romantic but the deed itself interrupted by the clutter of family life. Later there’s a fabulous tribute to Colin Firth’s other Mr Darcy, involving a swimming pool, a pet rescue and a very wet white shirt.
Yes the film is tropey, in a way that only a British romcom can be, but everything works, and in amongst Bridget’s sometimes overegged pratfalls and face-pulling, the effects of grief on a family struggling to find a way through, while not even sure if they want to, is affectingly told.
Adorable and relatable though Zellweger still is as this supremely British heroine, the star of the show is Hugh Grant, back as Daniel Cleaver, now an uncle figure to her children and about to undergo his own wobble about his place in the world. Grant is, as always nowadays, hilarious, a hot, ageing cad being much more interesting than a hot ageing dad (though turns out Cleaver is that too). Grant has already out-acted two British icons – Bridget and Paddington – so they should really make him the next Bond villain and have done with it.
Also back is the rest of Bridget’s gang (Jude, Shazzer, Tom) while some old favourites are blink-and-you-miss-them (Una Alconbury, Bridget’s Big Pants). There is also the teeniest of cameos from Isla Fisher as Bridget’s next door neighbour, which seems to have been designed purely to lead into a single one liner, though to be fair it’s a good one.
New to Bridget’s world is gorgeous “whistle-obsessed fascist” Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the brusque-but-charming new science teacher at her children’s prep school. Mr Wallaker believes in order, in physical laws and Isaac Newton; Bridget in magic. She has to, as she struggles to keep Mark alive for the children so they don’t feel so alone. Can our heroine and Mr W find a way to bridge (sorry) the gap? (Yes!) And what is the effect of Newton’s First Law on big pant knicker elastic? (Weirdly they don’t go into this.)
Our cinema screening was absolutely packed, and laughter-filled, which is quite a feat as though we all love Bridget we are also all over 50 and ragingly angry at everything the whole time. But Bridget’s troubles and triumphs have always mimicked our own in some way; back in TV land things have changed, but also not changed, as the evolving news landscape combined with ageism and misogyny leaves Talitha (an excellent Josette Simon) presenting a daytime chatshow after years as a foreign correspondent.
I did cry, and not even at any scene in particular, which could have been the film or maybe it was just my HRT wearing off.
Read my recap article: Love never dies – Bridget Jones Mad About The Boy spoilers and ending
Watch the trailer for Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy