Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy

Oh, Bridget. Ever since she burst onto the scene, first in Helen Fielding’s popular Independent newspaper column in 1995 and bestselling novel a year later, then on the big screen in 2001, Bridget Jones has earned her place in the pantheon of iconic British characters. The first film’s script might have been co-written by romcom king Richard Curtis, but Bridget Jones’s Diary offered an authentic female perspective on the trials and tribulations of finding love at the turn of the millennium. It was goodbye to lovesick, floppy-haired heroes, and hello to giant knickers and Marlboro Lights.

Twenty-four years and a few sequels later, in Mad About The Boy, we find Bridget living on the edge of Hampstead Heath in North London, with two children under ten years old. Beloved husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), the ultra-honourable human rights lawyer, has been dead for four years, killed in Sudan. Bridget has been resolutely single ever since, but, as old friend Shazzer (Sally Phillips) advises, the cure to her emotional stagnation is firstly going back to work as a television producer, then getting laid again. Tinder toy boy Roxster (One Day’s Leo Woodall) might be the one to relight her fire, but her children’s severe science teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) also starts to show his softer side.

The most touching scenes are between Bridget and Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver.

The screenplay, written by Fielding, Abi Morgan (Shame, Eric and The Split) and, er, Borat’s Dan Mazer, is missing some of the daft humour of the previous instalments, although Bridget does have a run-in with some dodgy lip-filler. In swapping slapstick for sincerity, the film becomes a tender and perceptive depiction of discovering the potential for joy even while enduring such terrible grief. It’s also refreshing to see an older woman as a mother and a sexual being, and there’s no real judgement regarding her fling with a much younger man.

Even more unexpectedly, by far the most touching scenes are between Bridget and Hugh Grant’s charming rogue Daniel Cleaver. Absent since 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, ‘Uncle’ Daniel is now babysitting Bridget’s kids (“I think you give me 20 quid and try and shag me,” he winks), as well as experiencing the loneliness of an ageing playboy, and he and Bridget find themselves aligned.

A few nods to the original film, like turquoise cocktails reminiscent of Bridget’s blue soup dinner party, are charming without being laboured. But strip away the cameos and the callbacks and in this possibly final chapter you’ll find a sweet, surprisingly mature story of an imperfect woman letting herself fall in love all over again.