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Cillian Howley describes the delightful moments of romance and mishaps that colour the world of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, a triumphant and welcome return to the beloved franchise.
Bridget Jones is back, and she is mad about the boy. The boy in question; Roxster, played by the ever-charming Leo Woodall. Competing for her affection is Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a whistle wielding teacher at her children’s school. Renée ‘can-you-believe she’s-not-English' Zellweger effortlessly returns as the titular heroine alongside a slew of familiar favourites. Most notably, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) is back following his presumed death in the third film. Grant’s sharp and dry-witted Cleaver is a scene stealer. Reliably directed by Michael Morris and cleverly written by Dan Mazer, Abi Morgan, and Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding.
Of course, much has changed since Bridget’s last outing. Mad About the Boy meets Bridget four years on from Mark Darcy’s death on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. A widow and stay at home mother, Bridget has found herself in a funk and feeling the judgement of married friends and yummy mummies. Deciding to go back to work, Bridget hires a nanny and returns to television producing on ‘Better Women’, a Loose Women spoof. There, her friend and coworker Miranda (Sarah Solemani) sets her up on Tinder where she is exposed to the perils of online dating: emoji confusion, double texting, and ghosting.
Following a tree-related meet cute, Bridget begins texting the significantly younger Roxster. Their relationship develops following a date and soon their lives enmesh. He spends time with her children, Billy and Mabel, and meets her friends. Mabel asks if Roxster is her new daddy, meanwhile Billy struggles in school, still devastated by his father’s death. At a friend’s party, garbologist Roxster (yes, garbologist) makes a dramatic arrival. Following a dive into a pool to rescue a dog, he emerges soaking wet in a white shirt that clings to his ripped chest. The gaggle of middle-aged partygoers watch mouths agape as Bridget embraces her toyboy in a scene that playfully mimics Colin Firth’s famous dive in the 90s Pride & Prejudice series.
The discussion of the age difference is initially brushed past. Roxster reveals he is 29, to which Bridget jokingly says she is 35. This dynamic of an older woman and a younger man is a rarity onscreen, however, Mad About the Boy comes on the heels of Babygirl. Both films have received criticisms for their age gap romances. A clever advertisement on the London Underground read “don’t MIND THE age GAP”, a play on the warning repeated to passengers. Detractors accuse it of trying to imply age gaps are okay, though their argument feels biased. To that, I point to a hundred years of the reverse in cinema. Mad About the Boy and Babygirl, alike, evaluate their age dynamics in ways that films with older man-younger woman relationships never do.
For eagle eyed fans, the film is entertaining purely as a game of spotting the references to the previous installments. Bridget still has her penguin pajamas and see through blouse. Even her spanx make a reappearance. Bridget and her friends drink blue cocktails reminiscent of her disastrous blue string soup. The eco-friendly condoms responsible for Bridget’s accidental pregnancy appear on the shelf in a pharmacy. Bridget even chases a man in the show yelling ‘‘where are you going?’’ in a scene that will give every fan deja-vu.
Like its predecessors, Mad About the Boy is charming, poignant and riotous. In classic Bridget fashion, she finds herself in many hilariously unflattering situations. She meets Roxster when she is halfway up a tree with her children. He picks up her phone and sees her Tinder profile with the tagline ‘tragic widow seeks sexual awakening’, much to her embarrassment. Bridget gets botched lip filler and drops a load of STD booklets in her children’s schoolyard. The friendship between Bridget and Daniel is a heartwarming site, two decades on from their ill-fated romance. In the third act, Billy sings a moving (if slightly grating) tribute to his father at the school talent show.
I saw Bridget Jones in a packed cinema where the audience was mostly made up of middle-aged women, a demographic consistently underserved by Hollywood. Recent examples of event cinema with women at the fore; Barbie and Wicked appeal to younger audiences and take place in fantasy lands. Her spacious London apartment was not realistic, but Bridget’s mistakes, mishaps and gaffes certainly are. Regardless of how fairytale-like one film ends, it is never happily ever after for Bridget. Each sequel usually finds her single or unhappy, if not both. Such is life. Perhaps this is why almost a quarter of a century later, cinemagoers are still showing up in droves to watch our relatable heroine in all her messy glory. She is truly every woman (cue Chaka Khan).