Bridget Jones Does Another Round of Singleton Bumbling in Mad About the Boy

A neat side effect to the contemporary forever franchise is that sequels to the kinds of movies that might not typically generate them – a romantic comedy like Bridget Jones’s Diary, say – can, over time, accumulate into something akin to the Before series: an occasional, years-apart check-in with a character we’re able to watch change and grow from young adulthood to maturity, parenthood, and loss, among other aspects of the human experience. It might be worth asking, however, if Bridget Jones is really a character who warrants a quarter-century on-screen journey. As played by Renée Zellweger in the original film, based on the Helen Fielding novel, Bridget is sweetly hapless and occasionally sardonic, always at the wrong moment, and eventually finds Pride and Prejudice-style love with the stuffy but honorable Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth), who loves her for her all her foibles. It’s a formula rom-com execution so satisfying that Zellweger got a rare Oscar nomination for the role.

Of course, rom-coms don’t often garner sequels, and two follow-ups to Bridget Jones could only conceive of ways to replay the Darcy drama, repeatedly regifting Bridget her hard-won happily-ever-after. After the third movie felt a bit more Sex and the City than Jane Austen, what could be left for Bridget but to make her a Carrie-style widow and therefore a bumbling singleton again? Goodbye, Mr. Darcy. Hello, Bridget Jones, single mother of two.

To be fair, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is based on another Helen Fielding novel; she killed Darcy first. (The previous film, Bridget Jones’s Baby, was an interim concoction based on some stray Fielding writing, not a full novel.) And if Bridget’s story is going to continue, why not put her through something genuinely difficult yet terribly common, with the loss of a spouse in middle age? There’s even a bittersweet irony available in the way that the concerns of Bridget’s relative youth – her weight, her career, her attractiveness and composure as an adorable 32-year-old – are echoed and magnified for a woman in her fifties with the considerably higher stakes of providing for her newly reduced family. This Bridget is fitter and more fearless at her newly reclaimed TV-producer job than ever before, which does nothing to mitigate her dazed confusion and self-consciousness over a handsome young man named Roxster (Leo Woodall) showing her a great deal of attention.

Then again, this is not a terrible problem to have, and Bridget’s more real concerns, like whether she’s a good enough mother to her son and daughter, are often subsumed by not-especially-relatable upper-middle-class problems, such as: Help, my young and skillful nanny is too good at the job I can easily afford to pay her to do! (Yes, Bridget has joined the cohort of white women whose shames become absurd grievances.) In scene after scene, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy pursues lines of comedy that simply aren’t all that funny, from those larger-scale concerns to smaller moments, like the multiple gags that depend on eye-rolling double meanings contrived to embarrass Bridget. (Why would a lunch-counter employee ask “do you want to go for a drink?” when he means, “your meal deal comes with a drink”?)

Moreover, and without wanting to give too much away about a movie that seemingly takes little pride in its unpredictability, stuck for a story in a Darcy-less world, all the movie can really think to do is spiritually revive the character in the form of another seemingly aloof but actually sweet-natured man for Bridget to encounter, in this case her child’s teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who appears in between scenes characterizing every other mom at the school as condescending snobs. (Not like our salt-of-the-earth Bridget, with a TV-producer job that she reacquires at will.) Is the movie attempting to pass this off as a full-circle moment for our heroine? At least the incorrigible Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) gets a little more character growth, in the sense that he mulls reconnecting with a mostly-off-screen child, treats Bridget more like a friendly ex than a potential friend with benefits, and sports a more gravelly voice. With Grant given a part after a fake-out death in the last one, and Emma Thompson returning somewhat pointlessly as Bridget’s physician, there’s also a vague sense that the Bridget Jones series is after a sort of Fast & Furious-style all-star edition.

Look, there’s nothing really wrong with a diluted return of a beloved character, even if what looked like endearing clumsiness at 30 plays more like Zellweger mugging up a storm 24 years later. Fans of the series will likely bask in the warm feelings, particularly a handful of scenes following a one-year time jump toward the end, like Tolkien devotees reveling in final stretch of Return of the King; agnostics may regard this same section as if it’s, well, the final stretch of Return of the King, playing to the similarly unconverted. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy does seem determined to send Bridget off once and for all. But then, the first movie wasn’t exactly a cliffhanger, either, so Bridget Jones: The Edge of Retirement can’t yet be ruled out.

Director: Michael Fielding
Writers: Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, Abi Morgan
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Nico Parker
Release Date: February 14, 2025 (Peacock)

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.