Bridget Jones Calls It a Day might have been a better title, but Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy it is, a final trot around the paddock for Renée Zellweger and most of the familiar faces from the previous three films, plus a few new ones. Instant verdict: not bad. Definitely better than BJ2, but then that isn’t hard.
Set in that Richard Curtis Cinematic Universe – a cosy well-to-do London beyond the imagination of most of its residents – it’s a genial, good-natured and ultimately rather rueful farewell which picks up the action with near-shut-in Bridget mourning the death of her husband (Colin Firth, who does a couple of ghostly cameos).
The story then whisks Bridget through a dating-a-younger-man scenario, sends her back to work as a TV producer and finally puts her together with a new Mr Right, who looks like the Mr Right she’s going to end up with from the first moment he appears on screen.
It’s comfortable and comforting, with a few good jokes to keep alive the notion that it’s a comedy. Some questions remain unanswered, like how come the endlessly disorganised and dithery Bridget can be so capable at work when she’s a car crash in her personal life.
It’s been three years since Renée Zellweger made a screen appearance (in mini-series The Thing About Pam) and six since she made a movie (that Judy Garland one). It’s as if she’s been saving up the energy for the performance she puts on here, which is full-wattage twinklesomeness in a bottle. All the performances are good though, or just as you want them to be. Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson work their variation on the British stiff upper lip. Sally Phillips quaffs wine. Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones are loving and concerned parents.
Joining them are Leo Woodall, so convincing in season two of The White Lotus, likeable if not entirely credible as Roxter, the younger man hot for Bridget. And Chiwetel Ejiofor as the stiff and officious teacher of Bridget’s lovely kids.
Bridget’s use of the word “shagging” seems overdone – as if it were a badge of Britishness, if not Bridgetness – and her love of coy swearing (“shitballs”, “fuckbubbles”) also seems to have been wheeled out as a callback to the Bridget of the big knickers era.
It is so not for me. And yet I warmed to it, especially once writers Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan (no lightweights, any of these) decided that they were aiming at an emotional target rather than a comedic one. Hugh Grant’s little speech when Daniel realises, after a heart scare, that his playboy lifestyle has left him high and dry on the wrong side of 50 was genuinely touching. And the Hollywood moment near the end when Bridget’s son sings a song at the school concert is cute and tearjerking.
The last movie Michael Morris directed was To Leslie, the very American trailer-trash melodrama starring Andrea Riseborough. He seems to the manor born with Bridget and her pals and gives us the cheerful and welcoming London of pubs and four-storey Hampstead houses. I don’t think I saw a red telephone box, but it did snow towards the end because it’s the sort of movie where chunky knitwear must be worn.
Yeh, nice. I’d expected to hate it, if I’m honest. But as the end credits rolled, and the montage of clips from the earlier movies in the series reminded us how young Bridget, Daniel, Mark and all the others once looked, I realised that Bridget is an easy target for mockery – that is the point of her – but she will probably endure. This could become a Christmas staple.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
