One Bridget Jones movie has a stinker of a Rotten Tomatoes rating: why did the critics hate it?

The latest Bridget Jones movie, Mad About the Boy, has been breaking box office records, drawing positive reviews, and getting a great audience response. However, there's bizarrely one movie in the four-movie franchise that critics hate — Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (the one where Bridget dances in the ocean after accidentally taking some illegal substances!).

The second movie, released in 2004, has a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of just 27%! It looks like a complete anomaly when you see the RT critic scores for the other three films: Bridget Jones's Diary 79%, Bridget Jones’s Baby 78% and Mad About The Boy 86%.

Yes, the current movie has the best critics score of the whole franchise and is the only one to top 80%. If you combine its critic and audience score you get an overall score of 160, tying it with the original film as the most well-loved film in the series.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason has a perfectly respectable 60% audience score, lower than the other films but not bad, however, the 27% critics score is just a shocker! So why the critical loathing? Well, sequels are never easy and the original movie was in many ways the ultimate rom-com. Renée Zellweger nailed Bridget, despite the fears of some British fans that the American star wouldn’t be able to capture either Bridget's accent or her unique attitude to life. However, The Edge of Reason was a letdown for many. Will Self in London’s Evening Standard panned the movie, declaring: "There is something so plangently patronizing about the tone of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and it wasn't there in the first film. Maybe it's because this is essentially a retread, with the only difference being that Bridget has Darcy at the beginning, then loses him, then gets him back."

The New York Times review, hidden behind a paywall, is especially scathing, while in a slightly more positive review, The Guardian said: "Entertaining stuff, mostly, but Hugh Grant is absent for ages and ages, and without him it's just not the same.”

All the Bridget Jones movies are hugely enjoyable and if you like one you’re bound to like all of them. Mad About the Boy has actually broken the UK box-office rom-com record, making £11.8 million in its first four days of release. Ironically what was the movie that held the record previously? Yep, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.! Whatever the critics might think, fans still love Bridget.

Mad About the Boy is available on Peacock to stream now in the US, while it’s out in cinemas now in the UK.