It’s 3:00pm PST and I’m calling it: “Bridget Jones” is one of the best movie franchises. It’s not an uninterrupted victory parade of total success, since “The Edge of Reason” was more like a speed bump than a story. But for the last 2.5 decades, these movies have grown out of a pitch perfect romantic comedy classic and into a sweet and enduring saga of life going on, and on, as Bridget Jones — played beautifully by Renée Zellweger — discovers that every ending is another beginning, every tragedy is surmountable, and that life is always worth living when you’re armed with hope and good humor.
That streak continues with “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” a movie that finds the title character middle-aged and widowed with two children and no direction. These movies always remind us how easy it is to lose direction, and how important it is to get moving and find a new one. They also make you want to binge drink and, especially in the first movie, smoke like a chimney, but nobody ever said Bridget Jones was a perfect role model.
The original “Bridget Jones’s Diary” was a modern rehash of “Pride & Prejudice,” going so far as to cast one of the great Mr. Darcy actors, Colin Firth, as yet another love interest named Mr. Darcy. Navigating a love triangle between Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, who played the dashing cad Daniel Cleaver, is a problem towards which I think most us would eagerly lunge. She found true love, and then in the sequel “The Edge of Reason,” she broke up with Mr. Darcy for reasons which, as she eventually realizes while locked up in a prison in Thailand (look, I said it wasn’t the best one), were rather daft.
“Bridget Jones’s Baby” found Jones once again separated from Mr. Darcy, then reunited when she got pregnant and isn’t sure whether it’s his, or a handsome dating guru she met (and shagged) at a music festival, played by Patric Dempsey. In the end, it all worked out. She finally married the man she’s been circling her whole life, and it seemed like the dating guru was going to remain a part of their lives which, well, he hasn’t. Not if the new movie is any indication. Maybe Dempsey was really busy last year, who can say.
At the start of “Mad About the Boy,” Jones is still mourning the untimely and, frankly, severe death of her husband while on a human rights mission in Sudan. (Jesus, movie, you didn’t have to go that hard.) He’s been gone four years and now she’s finally ready to get back on the trolley, resume her career as a TV producer and even get on Tinder. And as anyone who’s ever used Tinder can confirm, that’s probably the scariest thing she’s ever done with her life so far. Even more than the time she jumped out of an airplane into a pig’s wallow full of excrement.
Bridget Jones may be getting older, but she’s still Bridget Jones, as irresistible a creature as any, so she quickly lands a 29-year-old old lover named (sigh) Roxster (double sigh), played by Leo Woodall (“The White Lotus”). That would be enough for most movies, watching Bridget get back her proverbial grooviness, but in “Mad About the Boy” it’s more of a stepping stone than a whole journey. The film, based on the third of Sharon Fielding’s novels (third movie was based on the fourth), keeps Bridget’s personal crisis front and center and largely free of contrivance. That Chiwetel Ejiofor plays her son’s science and choir teacher in a very Mr. Darcy-ish way is probably just a coincidence, and in no way indicative that they’ll fall in love in the third act. Surely not. That would be ridiculous.
Hugh Grant also returns in “Mad About the Boy,” and he’s still the same lothario as ever, with no explanation for what happened while he was dead for a year in “Bridget Jones’s Baby.” No amnesia, no secret intrigue, just a vague reference that he knows what it’s like to be dead, suggesting a supernatural spinoff about a spectral and eternally horny Daniel, who no doubt found his way back to the land of the living after helping others find true love. Or maybe that whole thing was just a super awkward way of explaining Grant’s lack of availability without nuking any chance of bringing him back in future installments. As the old Tootsie Pops announcer used to say, “The world may never know.”
It’s hard not to look at a new “Bridget Jones” film like you’re checking in on old friends. Which we are, indeed, doing, and doing unabashedly. But these movies have even more power as an ongoing saga of friendship, foibles and something else that begins with the letter “f.” Since the characters are very sexually active, you can probably think of one quite easily, but I think you should challenge yourself and come up with something else. “Family” is a lovely one. “Facundity” is a bit of a stretch but I’ll allow it as well.
The point is, “Mad About the Boy” is a welcome new patch in the sprawling “Bridget Jones” tapestry. It’s got all the humor and romance we’ve come to enjoy and all the caring and maturity we’ve come to depend on. Zellweger is exceptional as always, as is literally everyone else, and as we say goodbye to these funny and sweet people, we can only hope that there is another chapter in the “Bridget Jones” saga, and that we don’t have to wait too long to see it (or read it, what with the whole “based on a book” thing).
