Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025) – Lovelorn heroine ages beautifully in sucker punch of a fourth instalment

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Bridget Jones has always been, and always will be, the epitome of the struggling singleton in her thirties – over the years, we have loved and watched Renee Zellweger count her calories, drink too much wine, fall for Hugh Grant, then Colin Firth, then Hugh Grant again, then a myriad of others, wear ugly Christmas jumpers, take drugs, have a baby, and of course, wear her granny knickers shamefully and shamelessly. In Mad About The Boy, she is back on full form, this time hanging up the status she has for so long been attributed with and donning the widow hat – with two cheeky children and a fantastic supporting cast of old and new faces in tow. Despite the very real crises and traumas she has encountered over the years, Bridget has always remained optimistic and light – and though Mad About The Boy is without a doubt the darkest instalment, heavy with anxieties about old age and death, it retains that light shine that has kept our heroine so popular.

Bridget Jones films have historically always followed a similar pattern, and one that continues to work regardless of her age or stage in life – we open with a Bridget who is just about managing (be it with jobs or children). She is given solicited and unsolicited advice, has a bit of a breakdown, meets a man (or two), embarks on a sexual and spiritual reawakening, then learns, once again, to love herself, just the way she is. In Mad About The Boy, the two men in question are first the twenty-something Roxster (Leo Woodall), who rescues Bridget from a tree when she gets stuck up there in typical Jones fashion, and the stern Mr Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the new science teacher at the children’s school. Both do the trick as love interests, coming in second and third respectively after Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and before Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey) in the “who’s best for Bridget?” ranking. Though Jack is not present, Firth makes a series of tug at the heartstrings ghostly appearances as Bridget continues to come to terms with her grief and manage her children’s, and Grant is an absolute scene stealer as the haggard Daniel, still a heartthrob with a taste for younger women and a killer sense of humour, but slowly coming to terms with his limitations. Seeing the cumulative cast come together in older age is something quite beautiful – relationships have been forged and have altered, with Daniel now head babysitter (as opposed to sex god) and Shazza (Sally Phillips) on top form as Bridget’s prime protector during the most ghastly of occasions (notably, a couple’s dinner to commemorate Mark). What makes Bridget Jones is undoubtedly this odd hodge podge of quirky characters, and the fantastic performances that go along with it – while Grant is undoubtedly the standout with some of the best one liners in recent years, he has more than enough to compete with, from Emma Thompson’s grumpy doctor (“always put your oxygen mask on first!”) to Sarah Solemani’s TV personality Miranda, who happily drops Bridget and the kids when she matches with something on Hinge a mere five hundred metres away. Zellweger remains at the heart of this franchise, a binding glue in all of her glory – and yet, in Mad About The Boy, her voiceover and the diary as a framework are strangely absent, with little more than a reference every now again. This is a little disappointing – but then again, with two kids and a house to (attempt to) run, perhaps she simply doesn’t have the time. Just like we do with all of her mishaps and mistakes, we always find it in us to forgive Bridget Jones.