‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ Review: A Layered and Affecting Fourth Entry
Renée Zellweger gives her best and most vulnerable performance of Bridget Jones in a fourth installment that PIECES the titular character’s life back together in the wake of insurmountable loss.
Whoever in North America decided that the best-ever instalment of the Bridget Jones franchise was not worthy of being released in cinemas may be the biggest fool in the entertainment industry. Not only has the franchise been consistent commercial hits (even the second entry, The Edge of Reason, which critics largely panned, was a resounding box-office success), but the romantic comedy has also experienced a post-COVID boom. 2023’s Anyone But You has demonstrated to studios that the genre can release films with relevant cultural perennity only if it has a chance to bow out on the big screen, not on streaming.
To not experience the swan song to Renée Zellweger’s iconic portrayal of the titular character of Helen Fielding’s book series in a cinema feels like a crime, especially when Michael Morris’ adaptation of Mad About the Boy is the series’ most intimate and layered portrait of the character yet. It feels especially egregious when, in the United Kingdom, the film was released in theatres and saw record-breaking opening numbers for a romantic comedy. Wouldn’t Universal like to have a true match for Captain America on the big screen worldwide, especially for Valentine’s Day? Apparently not, and these shortsighted, anti-art decisions are what will ultimately kill our relationship with the silver screen.
While many Bridget Jones fans expected a crowd-pleasing, satisfying comfort movie, Fielding had other plans in mind for her protagonist, immediately disappointing a base who were rooting for Jones (Zellweger), to have a long, and fruitful life with her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and her two children, Billy (Casper Knof), and Mabel (Mila Jankovic). Instead, the movie opens with Jones still picking up the pieces four years after Mark’s tragic passing from an explosion while on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. Her father, Colin (Jim Broadbent), has also recently passed away, which forced Bridget to place her mother (Gemma Jones) at a retirement home with Mark’s aunt Una (Celia Imrie).
In the movie’s twenty-minute-long opening sequence, we see Bridget stuck in a perpetual rut of depression and loneliness ever since Mark died, frequently seeing his “spirit” at moments when she needs him the most. Firth doesn’t have much to do but stand in the frame like a Force Ghost, looking at Bridget in admiration with a light smile. Yet, Morris, with the aid of cinematographer Suzie Lavelle, crafts a potent language with Mark’s otherworldly presence that makes us feel his body more than a mere “presence” even when he’s not “physically” on screen. Of course, many will point out the metaphorical Night Owl as Darcy watching over his family. However, I was more taken aback by the scene where Bridget tucks her children to bed, and through a rack focus, Mark stands behind her – blurred – waiting for his turn to (spiritually) do the same.
This moment had a far more cathartic effect on me than the shots where Firth stands mindlessly in the frame as a guardian angel of sorts. Bridget never wants to forget him, but his imprint on her life slowly drifts away as time goes by (ergo, why we can’t properly see Mark in the frame). Yes, Fielding did not give the satisfaction of a “happy ending” for her character, which angered many of her fans, and for good reason. Bridget finally gets the life she wants, on her terms. Why can’t you leave it at that? In that case, the qualms are understandable. Yet, on the flip side, our story here is so full of tangible – and textured – emotion that one also understands why Fielding decided to do something few romantic authors would even dare do.
Such a decision probably wouldn’t have worked if Mark’s death was used for cheap emotional points, or to manipulate the audience immediately at the top of the story, but it’s never treated like this. Bridget still wants what’s best for her children, even if the world is metaphorically on her shoulders. After reminiscing a conversation she had with her father in the hospital a few days before he died, she decides that her life needs to get back on track, no matter the hurdles she still feels with Mark no longer being here for her.
In the hospital, Colin tells her, “Can you survive?” Bridget replies, “I think so. I have to. I’m trying.” The real kicker happens afterward, with her father stating, “It’s not enough to survive. You’ve got to live.” Inspired by him and remembering the last photograph they took together on his deathbed, Bridget reopens her diary for the first time since Mark’s passing and writes: “Bridget Jones, it’s time to live”.
Through the sounds of David Bowie’s “Modern Love”, Bridget Jones decides that it’s finally time to move on from the past because moping around in self-pity isn’t what Mark would’ve wanted. She returns to work as a television producer and is encouraged by her gynecologist friend, Doctor Rawlings (Emma Thompson), to resume dating. The landscape might have changed, but Bridget will again be caught in a love triangle between a young park ranger named Roxster (Leo Woodall) and her children’s science teacher, Mr. Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). With the aid of her best friends Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Miranda (Sarah Solemani), Jude (Shirley Henderson), and Tom (James Callis), new babysitter Chloe (Nico Parker), and former lover Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), Jones attempts to navigate a planet that has continued to move whilst she was at a standstill for over four years. Everyone closest to her still feels her monumental loss, but they’ve all moved on from Mark when she – and her children – never did.
It’s why she decides to finally learn to live again. Anyone who’s experienced a soul-crushing loss knows that finding the will to move on and keep the person you loved most near to your heart is incredibly difficult, especially when her best friends are getting older and are experiencing profound regret at the dwindling time in front of them. Meanwhile, Daniel is suffering from health problems of his own, and is finally sitting down and contemplating if the time he has so far spent on this planet was truly worth it. Bar none, the film’s most moving scene occurs as Bridget visits Daniel in the hospital and tells her his deepest regrets, as a man who has loved many people but only truly adored one person, who has always been there for him no matter what: Bridget Jones.
Grant sparsely appears in the movie’s 125 minutes, but his impact is felt throughout the time when Bridget thinks about what this newfound rediscovery of the joys of life means for her. For a while, having sex with Roxster and engaging herself in a playful romance with him may sound like the “emancipation” she needs to recover from her wounds. That’s why some people are misreading the fourth entry by focusing on the surface of Bridget’s kinship with Roxster, when it becomes more complex than this after the park ranger tries to win her back at the television studio. We see that the façade she created with him was only her best friends projecting what she wanted and not what she truly needed. At that point, she realizes that this “relationship” will not work, and she rightfully decides to end it.
It’s only when she begins to “soften up” to Billy’s science teacher that her life is nearing a second chapter, full of surprises, ups, and downs, but always in retaining Mark’s memory in mind. It’s futile to think she’ll be able to move on from his death, and for a while, Mr. Walliker stays within the rational confines of science to explain that there is no tangible metaphysical world beyond this planet and that Heaven has never been “scientifically proven.” Yet, when a young boy who has tragically lost his father and is still trying to figure out a way to keep going is afraid that he will someday forget him entirely, Mr. Walliker understands that he needs to be more than the “science teacher” and experiences something he’s rarely felt in his life: compassion.
He’s always viewed the grand cycle of life as a scientific equation meant to be solved and explained rationally, never having experienced loss the way Billy did. When he tells Mr. Walliker, “What if I forget him?” what is he supposed to say? How can Mr. Walliker comfort a child by staying true to what “science” tells him? By meeting Bridget, she’s opened up a part of him that was long lost through his periodic tables and scientific nomenclature that’s no longer applicable when attempting to treat Billy with the compassion he deserves. All of these moments, and more, are treated with great care and emotion through a style that’s far more personal in its close-up shots of the characters reflecting on their existence than the flair Sharon Maguire brought to the table with the first and third installments (I do not talk about The Edge of Reason).
Mad About the Boy is less comedic than the others, though it’s not without its fair share of fun, notably in Jones’ relationship with its bevy of effervescent supporting characters. However, the film is elevated by a career-best turn from Zellweger, who plays Bridget Jones with so much affection one can tell this is her swan song. Her eccentricities are less apparent here as Morris gives Zellweger the time she needs to portray Jones at her most vulnerable and broken, never ready to leave her past behind but embracing her present as the perfect time to learn how to live – and love – again. She retains the same contagious energy she had in 2001, but with layers of so much raw emotion that her plight becomes more affecting than the previous time we spent with her. None of it feels chintzy or manipulative: the conversations all feel natural, the comedy is note-perfect, and the dramatic underpinnings of Jones’ journey will move you to tears.
On Mark’s birthday, Bridget and her children walk to “post” their letters to heaven. Counting to three before releasing their balloons, Jones contemplates. She says, “What am I going to do when I get to…three?” an apt metaphor for her not wanting to “let go” of the time she spent for so many years with him. But when she finally finds the courage to say, “Three,” and the balloons fly up in the air, the desire for a more hopeful life seems to finally be possible for her. Of course, it won’t be easy, and there will be difficult patches along the way. No one said it would all be fine. But no matter what will happen next, Bridget Jones will be OK. And if she can live in this world again, never forgetting the people who loved her the most while embracing the newfound relationships she’s now built with her family, more resilient than ever, then you can also find the courage to do the same.
It’s time to live.