Well, Bridget Jones is back, and for a franchise wrung out of a newspaper column written over a quarter of a century ago and in a very different millennium, it’s almost a surprise to see a fourth film at all. Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) was perfectly adequate, but even then, the style and tone of the films seemed pretty old-fashioned. How things have changed since then.
So it’s another little surprise that Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025) is just lovely. This is probably the best film of the franchise since the first one. It’s a film that decides to imperfectly reinvent itself and change everything we thought we knew (and were exasperated about) in this franchise.
There’s one narrative lever that’s been boldly pulled to make this tale fresh – Mr Darcy is dead. No more genial Colin Firth to tuck in the kids at night, no more handsome prince for Bridget Jones except in dreams and spirit. And with that, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025) is suddenly all about grief. The opening hits you straight away with a sledgehammer of emotion. It’s been four years since Bridget Jones’ loving husband has passed, and now she’s a widowed single mother, jobless, bedraggled and out of touch. On the anniversary of Mr Darcy’s death, wracked with guilt, Bridget decides to get her life together again.
Those first 20 minutes are killer. The tragedy is balanced so well – the kids are still grieving, Bridget’s still grieving, and everyone’s under a black cloud of repressed feeling. Meanwhile, the climate emergency’s on the telly and the kids are disappearing into screens. The grief, then, isn’t just for Mr Darcy, but for the world he represented. Bridget Jones has to reinvent herself as a person and a franchise because that mid-noughties world that Bridget became an icon for is so different to today. But Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025) knows that, and by knowing that, pulls off a successful story about how to survive when the world you were a symbol for has totally disappeared.
Putting the grand analogies aside – it’s not all great. After that hammer-blow opening, there’s a very saggy middle section that Bridget herself would have worried about back in 2001. We’re back to Bridget being quirky and awkward as she gets back into dating as an older woman, and the jokes don’t really land at all. Leo Woodall comes along to take off his shirt and impress Bridget’s friends, but his romantic entanglement never stops feeling like filler. Extended jokes about Tinder and Netflix reek of product placement, and a lot of the set-piece comedy doesn’t land even when Renee Zellweger proves herself a top physical performer once again.
And then Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025) suddenly remembers it’s about grief again. After dropping that element for a weak half hour at least, we pick up again for a devastating final act. None of that would be possible without Chiwetel Ejiofor, the strait-laced but brilliant teacher of Bridget’s kids. He smoulders hotter than Notre Dame in 2019 until Helen Fielding’s script calls him to action, rounding him out into a great foil for Bridget and a really compelling character in his own right. Kudos as well to the child actors Casper Knopf and Mila Jankovic, who put in a good shift in tough roles as the grieving kids.
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If, too, this film is a paean to the lost world that Bridget Jones used to inhabit, no one represents that better than Hugh Grant. Here, his new take on the once-charming rogue Daniel Cleaver is old, unsteady, and melancholic in a mildly distressing way. Grant’s barely in the film, probably because he keeps stealing scenes. There’s a brief discussion of mortality and legacy in a hospital gown that’s probably the film’s finest moment. Hugh Grant has slowly, through a series of films over the past decade, deconstructed that roguish dandy character he used to play, and that sad little confession in hospital represents the end of that extraordinary arc. Everything this film has to say is wrapped up in his character.
Some miscellaneous notes. The music selection is just grand. Dinah Washington, Bowie and The Clash? Just lovely. The director seems to have kidnapped the cinematographers of the Paddington franchise, with how colourful London looks. Also, veteran screen presences Samantha Bond, Celia Imrie and Claire Skinner are credited, but either have a single line or appear bizarrely only in background shots. It’d be nice to justify their appearance fee with some dialogue.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025) could lose half an hour at least, getting pretty tough to bear in the middle. But whenever it focuses on the grief of its characters and the mourning of the world that Helen Fielding used to write about, it actually manages to hit consistently and incredibly hard. Fielding herself lost her partner recently. She’s due the greatest respect that she’s managed to transform that experience into an unlikely sequel to a dormant franchise. It’s a flawed but ultimately excellent film.
Still: Universal Pictures