Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy: comedy is absent from Bridget’s return

Romantic comedy is in a new era and some of the popular Noughties franchises are struggling to keep up with the changing times. Take And Just Like That… (2021-2025), the Sex and the City reboot that elevated so-called ‘woke’ rebranding to a high-camp art. It was absolutely unwatchable, yet I couldn’t look away. The Bridget Jones films are Britain’s answer to Sex and the City: both originated as newspaper columns, celebrating a brash model of female sexual empowerment and untenable metropolitan-media lifestyle that was modelled as aspirational to Nineties and Noughties career women. Both have not dated well. And both kill off their leads’ husbands, so I think I’m onto something here.

I was curious to see how they’d bring the fifty-something, newly widowed Bridget up to date in Mad about the Boy, the fourth and allegedly final film in the extremely New Labour-coded franchise. It’s almost a decade since we last saw Bridget so let’s recap. Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) ended with her marrying human-rights lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), and on the brink of becoming one of the Smug Marrieds she so despises. A newspaper clipping comes into view announcing that consummate cad Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), a past love interest, has been found alive (he died in the third film, please keep up). Somehow, we’ve got to film number four and now it’s Darcy’s turn to die, though on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. Cleaver has been proverbially airlifted back in for a cameo that feels low on effort but still extricates charm because it’s Hugh Grant. Bridget is no longer working for a hipster media empire but a Loose Women-style chat show. And Borough Market has been swapped for Hampstead, although it could be any posh London postcode, serving only as a marker of middle-classness particular to the Richard Curtis School of London film-making.

We have Christmas scenes, Emma Thompson, and binge-drinking. So far, so Working Title – the production company behind the Bridget Jones franchise. But somehow Mad About the Boy feels a little flat and lost in self-reference. Even Renée Zellweger’s normally excellent turn as Bridget feels like it’s slipped into self-parody. Sexual chemistry and comedy, two major pulls of the franchise, are both conspicuous by their absence. The film’s moribund tone is understandable, given the plot comes out of personal tragedy: novelist Helen Fielding’s grief over the loss of her husband. At best, you can take Mad About the Boy as a moving meditation on ageing, grief, and contemporary widowhood. At worst, it feels like a concept that’s run out of steam. Either way, the laughs are in short supply.  

To bring us into the present day, Bridget has a bizarre meet-cute with smouldering park ranger Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall), who improbably geolocates her on Tinder after rescuing her up a tree (Jane Austen would never). One senses that Woodall could successfully seduce an inanimate household appliance, but here, the sexual tension just short-circuits. Regardless, Woodall shines in the one good scene, helpfully soundtracked to Dinah Washington’s “Mad About the Boy” in case you think you’ve missed it. Also appearing on the romantic horizon is the sexy but sensible science Teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor channelling strong Mr. Darcy energy), who helps Bridget’s son process his grief through music. Sadly, his narrative arc from ‘uptight whistleblower’ to ‘romantically available surrogate father’ just didn’t track for me.

A key part of the drama in past films hinges on the love triangle between two men fighting for Bridget’s attention, usually building to some sort of Mexican stand-off. First it was Darcy and Cleaver, and it was good. When Cleaver got killed off and the love triangle morphed into a paternity battle between Darcy and algorithmic entrepreneur Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey), that was less good. Now, it’s been jettisoned entirely, though curiously not from the marketing campaign. As one love interest fades from view, another comes slowly into focus. Romantic affairs are clearly taking a back-seat to Bridget’s own journey through grief, which is fine if you are moved by the journey, but if not – there’s not a whole lot to laugh or cry about.

Weirdest of all was the film’s tiptoeing around Bridget’s age. Roxster, who is 29, assumes Bridget is in her mid-thirties and she never corrects him. He eventually ghosts her, presumably still believing she’s around 35, because he can’t invent a time machine. “For a six-year age gap? She’s not Benjamin effing Button!” my friend observed, sagely. 

I found Mad About the Boy tonally strange, and it left me feeling curiously depressed. But it’s smashed box-office records and had rave reviews, so what do I know?

► Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is in UK cinemas 21 February.