GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2
Rated: M
Directed by: Michael Morris
Screenplay by: Helen Fielding with contributions by Abi Morgan and Dan Mazer
Based the Novel Written by: Helen Fielding
Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Jo Wallett
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Isla Fisher, with Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.
‘It’s not enough to survive; you’ve got to live.’
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy shows Mrs. Darcy (Renée Zellweger) at home with her two children, nine-year-old Billy (Casper Knopf) and four-year-old Mabel (Mila Jankovic).
Bridget is now a widow, coping with the chaos of raising two kids on her own.
In classic style, Bridget struggles with her zipper, the kids need their dinner and the house is about to catch fire.
Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) to the rescue. To babysit the kids.
There’s still the same gang: Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson), Tom (James Callis) and Miranda (Sarah Solemani) to help remember Mark (Colin Firth) on the anniversary of his death.
Her friends help Bridget through, Jude weirdly licking the slice of orange on the side of her drink, all giving advice or saving her from advice or warning her about the dangers of labial adhesion from lack of use.
It’s time for Bridget to start again.
So when Miranda loads Bridget’s profile on Tinder, Bridget realises flirting is fun. Particularly when a toyboy, enter Roxster (Leo Woodall), saves her kids from a tree. And Bridget from her grief.
It’s all romance and funny moments; constantly giving the science teacher, Mr. Wallker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) the wrong impression like buying an assortment of condoms because who know what to buy after all this time, so why not a variety?
What I didn’t see coming were all the tearjerking moments.
Director Michael Morris states: “How do you make a movie that is quintessentially Bridget Jones, but which also engages with issues and emotions that these movies haven’t engaged with before? I latched onto the question of how Bridget, or how any of us, overcome something that feels unimaginable. I had this notion of creating a ‘comedy of grief.’ This is a film that wants to honor an experience that all of us are inevitably touched by.”
The film’s a roller coaster of emotions with notes of nostalgia.
The characters have grown older so there’s change, there’s life with children; there’s the unpacking of what’s important, still being naughty while being a mother, working, grieving and new beginnings.
The humour felt heavy handed at times, but that was the beginning, that opening of forced jovial moments with the kids.
But I was won over with Daniel’s naughty nun comments.
And although the humour was still there, (fuck, I mean fuck-catia… Did you eat all the focaccia?) this instalment of Bridget Jones was more about the change in Bridget’s life. There’s antics, but it’s the emotional change that was the overriding feeling.
