Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is the fourth outing for our heroine as played by Renée Zellweger and I was not especially hopeful. Who can still be bothered? Particularly after that silly Thai jail business (second film) and then all that flailing about in the mud at a music festival (third).
But this takes you right back to when you did care. The franchise (this time directed by Michael Morris) seems to have finally grown up a bit, and explores loss and grief with surprising depth. That said, it still knows exactly what it is, and what to deliver, and is in touch with its former self via nostalgic nods to blue soup, big pants and those penguin pyjamas first seen 24 years ago. They’re faded but still going strong. (I think we can safely assume they are not from Primark.)
When the film first opens, we find Bridget, who is now 51, in a sad situation, very sad indeed. She had married Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), the Austen-inspired man of her dreams, but he had died four years ago. He was blown up in Sudan while on an humanitarian mission. A sexy, honourable death for a sexy, honourable fella. Bowel cancer would never have dared. Firth still appears, but spectrally. (He’s just as hot in the next world in case that was a concern.)
Bridget is now bringing up their two young children on her own. They live in Hampstead in a chaotic house. Everything in her fridge has expired and she sets pasta on fire, which is all very Bridge, but here’s what’s different.
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