At The Movies: Bridget Jones returns with a widow’s romcom that plays it safe

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (NC16)

125 minutes, opens on Feb 13
★★★☆☆

The story: The fourth film in the romantic comedy series based on the Helen Fielding novels finds Bridget (Renee Zellweger) grappling with life four years after the death of her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Now in her 50s and a single mother of two, she reluctantly re-enters the dating pool at her friends’ urging. Her potential suitors? A young and energetic park ranger named Roxster (Leo Woodall) and the more age-appropriate but no-nonsense Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a science teacher at her children’s school. Meanwhile, her rakish ex Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) lurks in the background.

Domestic bliss for our romcom heroine? Never. Or, at least, viewers will never see it.

The marital years that might have happened between the third movie Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) and this one have been skimmed over in favour of Bridget returning to her original state: single, but this time with two children and the memory of their dead father.

With Mark gone, the love triangle – a format that animated the previous films – would seem to have vanished as well. Not quite. 

The fit and attractive Roxster is there, as is the mature but equally fit Mr Wallaker. Both are the spiritual successors to Daniel and Mark, giving Bridget her signature romantic dilemma.

Bridget has also evolved. The cigarettes and alcohol units of her past are long gone, but she remains endearingly prone to falling flat on her face, either socially or in a more literal sense.  

She is sober in more ways than one. Memories of Mark, killed while on a humanitarian mission, haunt her. The story acknowledges her grief in ways that aim to not cast a pall on her otherwise humorous journey towards romance. 

The way the grief is represented visually by English director Michael Morris feels more like aesthetically pleasing nostalgic longing than actual mourning or loss. It is a way to show mourning without crushing the light-hearted mood – this is, after all, a romantic comedy – but it does feel like a cop-out. 

It is possible to handle the contrast of light and dark while staying funny. The art of drawing laughs from pain is best exemplified in movies such as the illness comedies 50/50 (2011) and The Big Sick (2017), so it is a shame that Mad About The Boy prefers a watered-down version of the idea found in Ghost (1990).

To be fair to the film-maker, this is a studio product, made to order, designed as comfort viewing for fans of the franchise and, for what it is, it could have been worse.

Hot take: In this fourth instalment, Bridget Jones navigates widowhood and single motherhood while juggling two new love interests, though its handling of grief feels superficial.