It feels rare that films these days preach the message that a simple life can be a perfect one, or that ageing isn’t a punishment. Indeed, there are what feels like a bombardment of films surrounding age-gap relationships hitting the box office, telling their audiences that you’re never too old and that age doesn’t define you. But sometimes you can be too old. However that isn’t always a bad thing according to the latest instalment in the Bridget Jones universe. British director Michael Morris, in his first foray into the Bridget-verse, tells a heartfelt story of family, friendship, love and loss and that the perfect life can be the simplest.
It has been almost 25 years since Texas native Renée Zellweger stepped into the shoes of the loveably gauche Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones’s Diary, and this year she’s back for her fourth go-around. When we last saw her back in 2016 in Bridget Jones’s Baby, Jones had finally met her happy ending. After years of on-again, off-again torment, Bridget and human-rights barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) were finally a family on the cusp of their happy-ever-after. At the start of Mad About the Boy, however, it is revealed that at some point in the time between the two films, Mark was killed on a humanitarian mission in Sudan, leaving Bridget and their two children (Billy and Mabel) alone in their – it has to be said, enviable – Hampstead townhouse.
Four years after the death of her very own Mr Darcy, it appears that when Bridget is bathing at all, she is bathing in Pinot Grigio, and living in her Christmas pyjamas from back in her single days (which have made a charming cameo in every film Jones film). Like the burned spaghetti dinners thriving in her kitchen, Jones is on the verge of a meltdown, struggling to keep the Bridget puzzle together since losing its most crucial piece.
From one crushing blow to the next, it turns out that Bridget’s dad Colin (played as sweetly as ever by the legendary Jim Broadbent) has too passed away recently. In what we assume are his final days, Bridget’s father leaves her with some salient, tearjerking advice: that she has to live, not just survive.
Mad About the Boy also features the long-awaited return of Hugh Grant’s indomitable Daniel Cleaver. Still a womaniser to the under 30s, but this time Cleaver takes on a new job as Bridget’s babysitter, stealing every scene with each appropriately bawdy one-liner and perennial smirk. If anything, Daniel’s return is a lesson to all that, you can in fact be friends with an ex once the statute of limitations on “fuckwittery” has passed.
The Darcy brood appear to be flourishing unlike their hapless mother, who is often bombarded with a myriad of life philosophies from her friends and family: get back out there, go back to work, have sex, don’t have sex, the contradictories go on. It isn’t until a visit to her no-nonsense gynecologist (a pragmatically charming performance by Emma Thompson in her second Bridget flick) that Bridget realises she needs to re-enter the world which has missed her delightful, booze-soaked optimism. While Demi Moore eventually collapses into goo in The Substance, and Nicole Kidman risks her marriage and career for a glass of milk in Babygirl, Renee Zellweger’s Bridget–unlike the milk in her fridge– remains a “woman of a certain age” with no expiry date.
What follows is a return to her job as a television producer, however this time around Bridget is producing a very Gen X Loose Women and This Morning hybrid starring long-time friend Miranda (played hilariously by Sarah Solemani), who signs her up to Tinder as a “tragic widow seeking sexual awakening”. Despite the sardonic Tinder bio, the film manages to avoid boxing Bridget in as a tragic spinster or erotomaniac, something which often creeps up behind women of a certain age in mainstream films. Instead, Bridget Jones manages to keep the core message of the film series intact, that Bridget deserves to be loved exactly as she is. A tragic widow now, a beautiful–albeit clumsy–charmer always.
As it turns out, Bridget’s sexual awakening was just around the corner in the form of Roxster (played by an appropriately objectified Leo Woodall), a park ranger slash biochemistry student who is 22 years her junior. What the film subsequently– and refreshingly– doesn’t do is make their relationship a twisted overly sexual toxic caper which has to be hidden from the world. Endless sun-soaked dates ensue, but the cracks in Bridget’s enviable romance can’t be caulked with an Al Green scored montage, as the age gap between the two lovebirds inevitably catches up to Bridget.
In comes Mr Scott Wallaker, Billy’s new science teacher played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in his first romantic leading role, inviting the question of why this is his first rom-com go around, exuding romantic prowess as the straight-talking, whistle-blowing teacher. Mr Wallaker is brazen, outdoorsy and at times insensitively logical. Despite their clashes surrounding Mr Wallaker’s absoluteness and Bridget’s desire to keep her children’s innocence in tact for as long as possible, they’re a perfect match. As a viewer, one can’t help but the draw the similarities between Mr Darcy and Mr Wallaker: they’re both pragmatic and intelligent, but also carry with them just the right amount of sensitivity and melodic counsel to perfectly offset Bridget’s buoyancy.
There’s always the risk when putting children in prominent roles on screen that they will be written as miniature millennials, obsessed with technology and social media and are incorrigible arseholes to their trying parents. But Billy and Mabel are endearingly lovable, with Mabel’s endless curiosity and whimsy tugging at your heartstrings, and Billy’s rendition of ‘I’d Do Anything’ at the school talent show in honour of his dad making even the most solemn of moviegoers tear up.
Romance was always going to be at the forefront of a Bridget flick, but at its heart is Bridget herself and her second chance at a happy ending. It’s the return of Bridget’s long-time best mates Jude, Shazzer and Tom (Shirley Henderson, Sally Phillips and James Callis in a triumphant return) and her television family that remind us of the importance of keeping our loves ones close for as long as we can.
In a final, touching scene, surrounded by her friends and family at a New Year’s Eve party, Bridget’s happiness is finally realised. Full of Easter eggs from the past (Billy wears a reindeer jumper exactly like that of Mark Darcy’s) and beautiful moments of laughter and love, including Daniel teaching a mesmerised cohort of kids how to make a “Dirty Bitch” cocktail, the scene encapsulates the subtle beauty of the simple life. We are met with touching moments of dancing and joy from everyone in the room, reminding us that the most beautiful parts of life are those spent together, and it is our nearest and dearest who remind us not just to exist but to live. In essence, it isn’t perfect, but it might be.
4/5
