#review: Bridget Jones is Mad About the Boy in her farewell film

Feeling all by himself, David Ho puts on his bunny ears and goes to watch Renée Zellweger's fourth and final turn as Bridget Jones in Mad About the Boy

There are certain characters that define a generation. For many millennials, Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City exemplified the glamorous ideal of a single woman on a fabulous hunt for love and shoes. For those that looked to a more relatable persona, Bridget Jones comes to mind.

Renée Zellweger returns as the bumbling Brit with a bottom the size of Brazil (considered quite a compliment these days) in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the fourth and final instalment in the film franchise. If your memory is a bit fuzzy about what Miss Jones has been up to up in the last few films, we saw her go back and forth with her chosen Mark Darcy, birthing him a son (despite some confusion about paternity) and eventually marrying Darcy for her Happily Ever After ending.

(Mild spoilers ahead)

Fast forward to Mad About the Boy, we learn that Darcy has unfortunately departed, which parallels Bradshaw’s loss of Mr. Big in the Sex and the City reboot - And Just Like That. What makes it different for the now middle-aged Jones is that she has to contend with raising two pre-teen kids on her own, as well as dealing with rampant ageism, casual sexism, and a litany of well-intentioned but contradicting advice from her circle.

Discovered alive at the end of the third film, Hugh Grant returns as Daniel Cleaver, who remains irresistibly incorrigible with his playboy antics. Jones’ former love interest continues to bring in the laughs with his flirtatious and lascivious ways, but now also plays a fun uncle to her kids (with Darcy probably rolling in his grave). He gleefully introduces them to his bevy of busty model girlfriends and teaches them to mix dubiously named drinks for him. We’ve been told that Grant wrote much of Cleaver’s part himself, showing just how impressively well he knows his character inside out, the same way that Zellweger knows hers as Jones.

After four years of grieving, Jones finally starts putting herself out there, re-joining the workforce and dating again with the headline “tragic widow seeks sexual awakening” on her Tinder bio to kick her journey off. Jones soon finds that being single as an older woman in the age of online dating is a tad different from her Y2K heydays. The 2000s are a quarter of a century away after all. 

The film returns to its Pride and Prejudice referencing by giving her two love interests to contend with. We have Roxster (Leo Woodall of The White Lotus fame) as her new and much younger love interest and Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) a whistle enthusiast and teacher at her son’s school. But unlike her previous Elizabeth Bennet-like entanglement with Darcy and Cleaver, there are no street brawls and lets Jones explore the potential of each suitor at her own pace.  Both actors do a great job with holding their own as new characters against a well-established cast. 

Mad About the Boy is easily the best of the already beloved Bridget Jones films, with a great balance of giggles and heartfelt moments. We follow Jones as she explores widowhood and single parenting with the same clumsy vigour that she had for navigating singledom and beauty standards. The pacing is fine and there’s clear character development for Jones, who retains the usual awkward girl humour in everything she does, be it getting stuck in trees, buying protection or making bad jokes in front of Darcy’s friends.

It’s heart-warming and incredibly nostalgic to see  the many nods to the past and how Jones’ many friends have grown. It speaks greatly to their staying power with the audience and how much we've grown with them. There’s a sense of change with the times too, be it the way Jones chides her boss for his language in the #MeToo era or how she learns of the term ghosting.

Mad About the Boy is a sparkling tale of love and loss. It gives us the romance and humour we’ve come to expect from any Bridget Jones title, but also provides us with perhaps the most relatable and human version of Jones we’ve seen across all films, even without wine and Celine Dion power ballads. 

Verdict: This bittersweet film is a must-watch and a fine, feel-good farewell for Miss Jones and her lot. The credits alone make such a fun trip down memory lane.

Also see: #review: Timothée Chalamet gives his best Bob Dylan impression in A Complete Unknown