'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy' warms and breaks hearts in equal measure
Cinema audiences are still mad about the girl as new Bridget Jones instalment charms, amuses and breaks box office records.
A full cinema is a rare occurrence these days, but filling seats was no problem for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy - a solid fourth outing for everyone’s favourite chaotic rom-com lead. In fact, it has been so successful at selling tickets that it now holds the record for the biggest UK box office opening weekend for a romantic comedy. Director Michael Morris clearly knows this audience well, and understands exactly what they want to see. Judging by the reactions of the packed-out crowd, what they want is a barrage of aggressively British humour, men competing for Bridget’s affections and a foul-mouthed Hugh Grant.
And that’s exactly what Mad About the Boy delivers.
Nine years after Bridget Jones’s Baby, we find a widowed Bridget living with her two young children and struggling to deal with the death of her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). She’s a shell of her former self, yet to return to work and reluctant to leave the house at all. But this soon changes, thanks to some gentle persuasion from returning characters Dr Rawlings (Emma Thompson) and Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who graciously offers to take a break from his busy womanising schedule to stand in as a babysitter. Bridget soon finds herself back at work, striking up a friendship with her son’s teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and, crucially, attracting the attention of a young, muscular park ranger named Roxster (Leo Woodall). But will it be real love, or just a summer fling?
Mad about the Boy is the cinematic equivalent of a warm bath. The characters are reassuringly familiar, the stakes are comfortingly low, and it is consistently amusing without ever being genuinely hilarious. There are very few jokes that fall completely flat, but the majority of the humour is aimed at the middle-aged people who remember seeing Bridget Jones’s Diary in the cinema back in 2001. Feeling inadequate next to the immaculately dressed mums at your children’s school, struggling to zip up a dress, not knowing which emojis are adequately sexy for use on a dating app. That sort of thing.
Where the film does take more of a risk, however, is in how it deals with Mark Darcy’s death. You don’t necessarily go to a Bridget Jones film to think about ageing, death and grief - but that’s exactly what Mad About the Boy asks the audience to do. Both Bridget and her son Billy struggle in different ways to overcome their grief, and this leads to some welcome moments of emotional depth. While the film can’t muster anything genuinely profound, it is a better film for its honest approach to tackling themes that, sadly, will be familiar to many in the audience.
Where Mad About the Boy slightly falls down is in the supporting characters. While Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, who have the luxury of reprising existing characters, steal every scene they’re in, the same can’t be said for Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor. They both do an admirable job with the material they are given, but it’s difficult to believe their characters live full lives when they’re off screen. Both Roxster and the teacher exist more as plot points and punchlines than fully-formed human beings, which in turn makes their interactions with Bridget seem disappointingly hollow.
But despite this, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy remains a funny, moving romp that is sure to make a perfect comfort re-watch in years to come.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is now showing in the Vue, Curzon Westgate and Phoenix Picturehouse.