Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy is ready to premiere on Peacock. With the long-awaited fourth entry within the misadventures of its eponymous heroine, followers and critics alike should ask: Is there any method to recapture the rom-com perfection that was 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary?
Directed by Sharon Maguire, that magnificent film adaptation of Helen Fielding’s cheeky fashionable spin on Jane Austen’s Pleasure & Prejudice not solely boasted a traditional love triangle but in addition the swoon-worthy trifecta of Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant. Theirs was a (pre-Challengers) three-way chemistry so intoxicating that filmmakers gave it one other go along with 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Fringe of Motive, making an attempt desperately to recreate the crowd-pleasing moments from the primary movie, from daffy duels to winsome confessions of affection. The outcome was a industrial success, however a vital flop. (And earlier than you determine to revisit it, be warned it has aged like an deserted banana.)
12 years would move earlier than Bridget Jones’s Child, which re-teamed Maguire, Zellweger, and Firth. (Grant’s rakish Daniel Cleaver was quickly killed off and swapped for a cocky, love-bombing American performed by Patrick Dempsey.) Whereas higher reviewed and a field workplace success, the movie sequence that adopted Fielding’s books was difficult its viewers to just accept one thing counterintuitive to its rom-com classification: There is not any such factor as fortunately ever after.
Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy takes this concept even additional, so brace your self.
What you might want to know forward of Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy:
Credit score: Jay Maidment / Common Footage
Regardless of that sizzling kiss on a chilly winter evening on the finish of the primary movie, Bridget Jones (Zellweger) and Mark Darcy (Firth) broke up for a portion of the sequel. And firstly of the third film, he was married to another person completely! So, what does that imply for Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy?
Properly — as readers of Fielding’s novel know — Mark has died, and Bridget is a widowed mom of their two children. So, this fourth installment strikes even farther away from being the story of Bridget and Mark’s love, and is extra a few lady of wit and wild impulses discovering happiness in the end the world throws at her. Undoubtedly, there’s one thing stunning about this, however followers who adore the primary movie’s hopefulness is likely to be hit arduous by this sequel’s blunt realities. I actually was.
Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy affords one other love triangle, minus Mark Darcy.
Credit score: Jay Maidment / Common Footage
Directed by Michael Morris, this sequel begins 4 years after Mark Darcy died throughout a humanitarian journey to Sudan. In an enthralling home, Bridget Jones (aka Mrs. Darcy) raises her light son Billy (Casper Knopf) and headstrong daughter Mabel (Mila Jankovic), with occasional babysitting assist from her rascally previous good friend Daniel Cleaver (a deliciously saucy Hugh Grant). Nonetheless, with out a husband, she is as soon as extra the pitying prey of smug married {couples} at a comically awkward feast, so feels pressured to get out into the relationship world once more.
A wide range of pre-established associates pop up, bringing again dazzling supportingly gamers like Emma Thompson as wry gynecologist Dr. Rawlings, Celia Imrie as pesky Aunt Una, Gemma Jones as Bridget’s fretful mum, Sarah Solemani as sassy TV presenter Miranda, and Shirley Henderson, James Callis, and Sally Phillips as Bridget’s beloved besties Jude, Tom, and Shazzer. Everybody has recommendation for the way Bridget ought to “transfer on,” starting from going again to work in tv to hooking up with the recent younger man who helped her out of a tree.
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With a reputation like a Intercourse and the Metropolis beau, Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall) is in his late 20s and deeply enamored with Bridget. Nevertheless it would not be a Bridget Jones film with out a romantic rival. Enter Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Billy’s science instructor, whose brisk method covers up a coronary heart of gold. (Sound acquainted?) However how is Bridget purported to get caught up in a brand new love when in every single place she goes she nonetheless sees Mark (Firth, enjoying a reminiscence)?
Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy is a ruthless tearjerker.
Credit score: Jay Maidment / Common Footage
Jane Austen did not write sequels, so Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy’s love was assumed to final with out incident ever since Pleasure & Prejudice‘s publishing in 1813. Fielding wasn’t about to place her beloved re-invented heroine on a shelf, so discovered contemporary obstacles and romantic thrills for Bridget Jones throughout 4 books. Perhaps there was a monetary motivation right here. However of all of the film’s sequels which have come from Fielding’s e-book sequence, Mad Concerning the Boy is essentially the most profound. It would not really feel like simply one other go along with Bridget and her boys. It pushes her to develop in significant methods exterior of her wacky shenanigans.
Do not mistake me. Bridget will nonetheless discover methods to embarrass herself in entrance of a crowd, be it verbal explosions or an ill-advised magnificence remedy. But to the credit score of screenwriters Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, and Abi Morgan, the grief over a associate’s loss is not swept underneath the rug, as if it is simple to maintain calm and keep it up. As an alternative, Bridget will keep it up with cheek!
Whereas Bridget would not weep, you’ll as she imagines Mark tucking their children into mattress with a smile and a music, or in her voiceover shares the ache of his absence. And to double down, her pricey previous dad (Jim Broadbent) has handed too, leaving her little safety in opposition to her mom’s well-meaning however intense intrusions. On prime of that, Bridget should father or mother her younger son via the grief, as he wonders how religion in an afterlife suits into the life-cycle classes he is getting at college. This sparks moments of concern, softened by Zellweger’s professional comedic efficiency. With all this loss and mourning — even amid the humor and sexual frolics — my face was awash with tears as I watched this film. And it is left me torn.
Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy might not be the rom-com you is likely to be anticipating.
Credit score: Alex Bailey / Common Footage
Earlier than you cue this up for Galentine’s Day or Valentine’s Day, know that it is not like its predecessors in a single main method. Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy isn’t an unabashedly feel-good film. Within the unique, a low level for Bridget was singing “All By Myself” in a melodramatic second of self-pity. Issues get a lot decrease right here. Whereas there are a slew of callbacks to the primary movie, from characters to comedy bits to costumes, it is not a comfortable retread just like the earlier sequels. Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy affords comedy and romance, but in addition delves so deeply into grief that it is not a breezy watch. And truthfully, I like that.
Grief is as sure as demise and taxes, and but Western society struggles with tips on how to discuss it. That Fielding made Bridget the face of such loss is sensible. There’s an inherent lunacy in grief, the place you’ll be able to really feel mad that the world carries on whereas yours has fallen aside. And who higher to point out us a path ahead than the lady who’s been mad in love and mad in heartache and mad in blue-soup making? There is a sense that if Bridget could make her method via the muck of mourning, then so can also we. And that’s great, even when it means this movie sequence now not strives to be feel-good.
Even because the film meanders to an indulgent runtime of two hours and 4 minutes, the filmmakers litter the trail with treasures. A few of them are tearful, whether or not it is Bridget wishing for her lover or her father. Some are joyful, like Bridget enjoying with the kids she pined for therefore intensely within the earlier sequels. Some are salacious and foolish, like an impressed set piece through which Roxster recreates Firth’s moist shirt scene from the Pleasure & Prejudice miniseries. (IYKYK).
And but, there’s part of me that resisted the movie, as a result of I am not able to let go of Mark Darcy. Re-imagined as a dream man for a brand new millennium, he made a era of ladies really feel seen when he instructed Bridget, “I such as you simply the best way you’re.” He was a beacon of hope in a sea of dangerous males. And there is a lot loss in the true world, why take him away from us? Truthfully, I resented Mad Concerning the Boy as I watched it, not solely due to my anger on the demise of this fictional character, but in addition as a result of Bridget’s journey hit house, forcing me to recall viscerally the real-life losses I’ve endured. And whereas she was capable of neatly — even charmingly – course of this over the course of this film, I nonetheless really feel mad concerning the loss. So, I used to be not prepared for Mad Concerning the Boy.
As a critic, I try to have an elastic empathy which may enable me to understand a film, even when it is not “for me.” And although I liked the primary Bridget Jones so deeply that I nonetheless know a lot of it by coronary heart, this sequel isn’t for me. Not but. My ache continues to be too uncooked to take consolation in Bridget’s newest diary entries. However I can acknowledge that. I have to give credit score that Fielding understood that via the lack of Mark, Bridget has extra to offer. She has been a wacky function mannequin of self love. And by following her subsequent chapter, we’re provided a good friend via a few of life’s ugliest moments. Simply as she has dealt with disasters far much less dire, she’ll do it with a signature smile and a little bit of wit.
Which is all to say that Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy is the most effective sequel of the batch. It is joyful, seeded with Easter eggs, and radiant with Zellweger again in full impact, but it surely’s additionally a tearjerker which may effectively knock the wind out of you.
Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy premieres completely on Peacock Feb. 13.
