‘Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy’: Review

Dir. Michael Morris. UK. 2025. 124mins

Check your cynicism at the gate for Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, an oddly comforting, leisurely, snufflingly nostalgic trip through almost a quarter of a century’s worth of singleton antics. It’s a Working Title bonanza too, distilling the sentiment and structure created in Four Weddings And A Funeral on up to the present day, where the gang is certainly older, a little bit wiser, more diverse and better off for it. A roll call of British national-treasure-thespians accompany Renee Zellweger through what has been called her final lap, though it’s possible some unexpected box office success could snap Bridget back into her big knickers again.

An oddly comforting, leisurely, snufflingly nostalgic trip 

Helen Fielding, the author of the source material and co-screenwriter here (with Abi Morgan and Dan Mazer) has devised an episodic, gentle vehicle for new franchise director Michael Morris (To Leslie) which wraps the viewer in warm waves. With a UK release set for a marketing tie-in-friendly Valentine’s Day (but streaming in the US), cinema foyers haven’t been this pink since Barbie and advance-bookings suggest a tsunami. They all wash up well: from Zellweger’s eternally wide-eyed naif to Hugh Grant’s louche Daniel Cleaver, Emma Thompson’s salty gynaecologist, mum and dad (Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent), and beyond. Joining them are a wholly charming Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leo Woodall, good sports both, though never placed in any direct rivalry for Bridget’s hand.

Which brings up the question of why Bridget’s said hand is not still being held by Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), her husband, father of her two small children, and vanquisher of caddish love rat Daniel Cleaver. The film gets his death – well-publicised from the release of the book, back in 2013 – out of the way in its first moments. And perhaps the long delay between the book’s publication, the repeated attempts to set the film up and Covid-19-led delays have been for the best. The loss of Fielding’s own partner, which inspired the book, also informs this film, giving even the most frivolous moments some unexpected – and needed – resonance.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is both more and less than a good film. One woman, two men, three acts is a tried and trusted formula, but this is a special case for a generation of newspaper and book readers and viewers who just want a happy ending for a character they view as a friend – and don’t mind a structurally-loose, tension-free, almost TV-like journey to get there. In the nearly 30 years since Bridget Jones’ Diary was first written, Bridget has lost some of her identifiable traits: she’s given up the cigs, is no longer a calorie counter and prefers the odd cocktail to a bucket of chardonnay. Grant’s Daniel Cleaver has also mellowed in some ways, although his current date is in her 20s and called Jeminizer. Bridget’s posse, led as always by Shazza (Sally Phillips), are still her most fervent supporters, but even they’re flummoxed about how to handle a friend who is still in such pain, four years after Mark Darcy’s death.

So gently, very gently, and with a very loveable spirit, Bridget is eased out of her pyjamas and her unfeasibly large Hampstead home and back into the workforce. In the spirit of the original Bridget, however, she does find romance while either embarrassingly stuck up a tree (with Hampstead Heath’s sexiest groundsman Roxster, played by Woodall), or saying the wrong thing on the school run/Outward Bound trip (with Ejiofor’s uptight-but-sexy science teacher Mr Walliker). Her adorable children may be pining for their father, but this is a Working Title film so there’s plenty of money for a nanny (Nico Parker), an AOR belter soundtrack (Modern Love doesn’t come cheap), and a London that is drenched in movie magic, from a date in Borough Market to the Bridget hallmark of lashings of Christmas (ensuring Love Actually will get a good run for its money on British terrestrial TV). It’s all so familiar and comfortable and on-brand for film UK you almost imagine Paddington will come lumbering around a corner, trailed by Nanny McPhee and the cast of Nativity. 

While its surprising innocence is what makes this film appealing, the franchise is still dependably cheeky thanks largely to Hugh Grant. Grizzled ‘Uncle Daniel’ has Bridget in his phone as ‘Dirty Bitch’, and acts as a beloved babysitter while not driving up and down the King’s Road in a sportscar. Audiences will adore him. Bringing Michael Morris in to direct while Fielding and Zellweger are listed as executive producers and the returning cast and crew are all so comfortable together could have been uneasy, but the TV director, whose debut For Leslie was Oscar-nominated, displays a fluid hand. It’s up to him to make sure the timing and delivery of the wet-shirt tribute is perfect; it alone is worth the price of admission, and that’s not just thanks to Woodall’s six-pack. While Roxster is significantly younger than Bridget – so much so, he ghosts her – the writers, and Woodall, find dignity in the character. Ejiofor is also well cast as Working Title’s first Black male romantic lead. He has the gravitas, but also the pecs, to go chest-to-chest with Woodall.

Bridget Jones has always been a threeway. There’s Bridget, gamely doing her best, and Zellweger continues to hold the show together with Mary Poppins-like grit. With Mark Darcy dead and beloved bad boy Daniel finally getting some - small - shred of dignity, Mad About The Boy could have felt empty, with Ejiofor and Woodall struggling to fill some very big boots. But Firth and Grant are ringing the changing of the guard here, reminding us of the passing of time and, yes, the importance of love, actually. Pack a hanky.