Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy review — a welcome return as Hugh Grant proves a scene-stealer

It's a truth universally acknowledged that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, her name was synonymous with 30-something single women who were looking for love, up against the attitudes of their families and friends and swigged Chardonnay to stave off loneliness. Big pants came into it as well. Now Bridget Jones is back, older for sure, but wiser? And, more to the point, is she still the ultimate standard bearer for singletons?

In the fourth film to bear her name, and still based on the novels of Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy finds her in her fifties with two children and adjusting to life after the sudden loss of her husband Mark Darcy. It takes time, but everybody around her — friends, family, gynecologist et al — is pushing her to move forward. Cue a friend who signs her up for a dating app, and an attractive park ranger in his late 20s who is quickly smitten. With her glow back and confidence sky high, the seemingly perfect mums at the kids' school are far less daunting and life is fun. Until he does a runner. Left high and dry, she's better at getting back on her feet and finds, once again, that what she’s been looking for is right under her nose.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy | Official Trailer - YouTube

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Like its predecessors, the film has been making headlines, but for different reasons.

This time it's the age-difference romance between 50-something Bridget (Renee Zellweger, of course) and sub-30 Rockster (Prime Target’s Leo Woodall). It’s been a favorite theme for filmmakers of late, from the dewy-eyed The Idea Of You to the manipulative Babygirl, in what's felt like an attempt to change attitudes. That's not what this film has in mind. The approach is conventional and predictable: he's incredibly attractive, they have a wonderful time together until he gets cold feet about her age and ghosts her. And, when he comes back, she's moved on because she knows it’ll never work. Lesson? It’s fun while it lasts, but younger men never stick around. It's borderline preachy and gives the film a very dated feel.

It's not the only aspect past its sell-by date. Bridget's friends and colleagues refer to Rockster as her "toyboy", a term that belongs in her first outing, not 2025. The dating app she’s signed up for is Tinder but, let’s face it, swiping left and right is kinda yesterday. She still lives in the cozy, affluent middle-class London of the 1990s, even though this is set in the now. Money is never short, her house is beautiful — Hampstead Heath is literally at the end of the road — and the children's idyllic school is full of little Tarquins and Jocastas, with judgemental, entitled parents to match.

Thankfully, Bridget does upset the status quo with her customary energy, wearing a PJ top when she takes the children to school and allowing them to make a mess in the house. She's the kind of mum that kids would adore.

But, as well as looking to the future, the film needs to keep its feet firmly in the past, with returning characters and references to memorable scenes from previous installments. Fans of the series know where they are with both the films and books and don't want anything to change, so every important box is ticked. Bridget, for instance, still has that strange habit of running out into the snow in a flimsy dress and never getting cold. And the big pants put in an appearance, visually and verbally (no prizes for guessing who mentions them!).

Zellweger has made Bridget her own and all the scatty, often naïve, appeal is intact, coupled with a more recently-acquired maturity, but she’s in danger right from the start of being completely upstaged. Basking in the glow of his current renaissance, Hugh Grant bookends the action and gets proceedings off to a great start as a thoroughly unsuitable babysitter, teaching her children things they shouldn’t really know at their tender age. And, even though his appearance towards the end comes dangerously close to schmaltz, his smile and naughty twinkle come to the rescue.

The scene-stealing doesn't stop there. Emma Thompson returns for a couple of scenes as Bridget's go-to for any medical issues and, more importantly, life advice. It goes without saying that she delivers, especially when it comes to laughs. Among the newbies is Leila Farzad, as the queen of the perfect "n" pushy mums who looks down her surgically enhanced nose at Bridget’s lack of makeup when taking the children to school. And, if she’d been given enough screen time, Joanna Scanlan’s make-up artist, Cathy, would have walked away with her scenes. She hardly gets a look-in and it’s such a waste.

For all the laughs and the familiarity, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy sags in the middle, spending too long on Bridget and Rockster’s romance and then frantically rushing towards a wholly predictable conclusion. Whether this is a fond farewell to Miss Jones remains to be seen, but there’s a definite air of finality about the film, as well as the sense that she’s at last, found the happy ending that she and audiences have always wished for. After everything she goes through this time, you can’t deny she deserves it.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is released in UK cinemas on February 13 and in the US on 13 February on Peacock Premium.