Movie: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

For fans of the Bridget Jones franchise the latest offering Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, will feel like catching up with an old friend.

First seeing Bridget in 2001, when the original film based on Helen Fielding’s best-selling novel hit the big screen, many have followed her ups and downs with great interest.

Sometimes delighted, often shocked and usually empathetic, Bridget has certainly captured the imagination of her fans.

This time around things are not so great as Bridget (Renée Zellweger) is once again alone.  She has been widowed for four years after husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) was killed on a humanitarian mission in the Sudan.

She’s now a single mother to 10-year-old Billy (Casper Knopf) and 6-year-old Mabel (Mila Jankovic) and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo.  Unable to get over Mark’s death she’s not working and drops the kids off to school in very ‘casual’ clothes much to the disapproval of fellow parents.

Pressured by her closest friends Shazzer (Sally Phillips) Jude (Shirley Henderson), Tom (James Callis) and Miranda (Sarah Solemani) and gynaecologist Dr. Rawlings (Emma Thompson) to start living life again Bridget decides to go back to work as a television producer.

She also ends up on a dating app where, after a rather embarrassing scene in the park, she is rescued and then pursued by the young, enthusiastic and very good looking Roxster (Leo Woodall).

The 29-year-old is a Park Ranger on Hampstead Heath who is studying to be a biochemist and is on a noble mission to create biodegradable plastics.

At the same time as a result her kids schooling, she also comes in regular contact with the rather strict science teacher Mr Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Mr Walliker seems to have a knack of catching Bridget at the most inappropriate or embarrassing times often causing her discomfort and him amusement.

While Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy features many of those funny moments and gags the franchise is renowned for, it also has a more serious and moving side as Bridget and Billy both deal with the death of Mark.

Interestingly Fields has said Mad About the Boy is the most personal of all her Bridget books as she is dealing with her most precious, private moments — the ones she shared with her children while she was navigating that moment in her own life.

While the emphasis is very much on Bridget her new loves and new people in her life including a super-efficient nanny (Nico Parker) and flamboyant television presenter (Josette Simon), cameo performances from Colin Firth and  Jim Broadbent as her father and Gemma Jones as her mother ensure a strong link to previous movies in the franchise.

Emma Thompson only appears in a few scenes but steals everyone of them while Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver has no trouble jumping back into his old character albeit with a changed relationship with Bridget which includes him babysitting her kids.

These supporting characters and Zellweger’s usual excellent performance ensure there’s nothing radically new in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. At the same time the familiarity of a storyline of a woman facing numerous trials and tribulations with often humorous results just about ensures this fourth movie in the franchise will be as popular with fans as the first.  The trials and tribulations of dating a younger man are also likely to resonate with those who have had similar experiences!

Bridget Jones: Made About the Boy is now showing in Australian cinemas.

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