‘Fourquels’ are usually where film franchises start to flirt with rock bottom. From Matrix Resurrections to Die Hard 4.0 to Batman & Robin and – shudder – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they love to coast along on past glories and creaky story beats. One of them even gave us the phrase ‘nuking the fridge’, the perfect shorthand for a movie series blowing itself into orbit.
It’s a joy to report, then, that Mad About the Boy is comfortably the best Bridget Jones outing since Bridget Jones’s Diary. In fact, there’s barely a Silk Cut filter between this and that delightfully goofy first screen incarnation of Helen Fielding’s great singleton.
And there is absolutely no nuking Bridget Jones’ fancy new Smeg fridge.
For Renée Zellweger’s still klutzy but now wiser Bridge, living in cosy Hampstead, the singleton Borough era is a distant memory. Ciggies and Chardonnay have been dispensed with (okay, ciggies have been dispensed with), replaced with a big dose of lingering grief for lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Her partner, and dad to her kids, was killed four years previously on a humanitarian mission to Sudan.
Via the attentive direction of Michael Morris (To Leslie) and a fab Zellweger turn, the push-and-pull of Bridget’s new reality – two young children needing their mum, a bunch of old pals, led by the still mouthy Shazzer (Sally Phillips), encouraging her to ‘get back out there’ – is laid out in an immaculate opening 10 minutes. ‘If you don’t get laid, your vagina will literally reseal itself,’ old pal Jude (Shirley Henderson) helpfully points out.
Bold decisions pay off a hundred times over. Firth’s appearances as the ghostly Darcy, the man Bridget can’t let go of, are moving where they might be cheesy, and are never overdone. (This is the weepiest Bridget Jones movie by far).
As ever, it’s Zellweger that provides the secret sauce
And the laughs? There’s plenty, especially when Emma Thompson’s hilariously brusque Doctor Rawlings and Hugh Grant’s newly resurrected but still sleazy Daniel Cleaver are on screen – which, sensibly, is quite often.
It says everything for the script (co-written by Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan) that even Cleaver, now entering his own Jurassic era and a bit sad about it, gets an affecting arc here. These days, Bridget can leave her kids with ‘Uncle Daniel’, even if he’ll probably teach them how to make a Dirty Bitch cocktail in the kitchen. Grant, needless to say, steals his scenes.
The plot will surprise no one, but it barely matters. The two love interests – Leo Woodall from One Day’s buff park ranger and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s punctilious, also buff head teacher – yield montages, mushy bits, the removal of shirts, and at least one excellent Barbie joke. Both romances fit elegantly into Bridget’s journey of rediscovery.
But as ever, it’s Zellweger that provides the secret sauce. Whether styling out kitchen disasters in front of her kids – ‘Fuuuuuck…accia!’ – grappling with her Netflix password (‘allbymyself’) or struggling badly with solo parenting, she keeps finding new dimensions for this relatably messy, ever-lovable character.
The outcome is the perfect pint-glass raise to a legendary Londoner.
In cinemas worldwide Feb 13. Streaming on Peacock in the US Feb 13.