Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy review – our hapless heroine is sharper, wiser and funnier
Renée Zellweger’s Bridget faces new challenges in parenting and love, but it’s the familiar faces around her who deliver heart and humour in this unexpectedly poignant fourth outing
There is something rather affecting about growing up and growing older alongside a fictional character. Particularly when, unlike the aspiration Barbies of Sex and the City, that character is permitted to show the inevitable wear-and-tear of being a middle-aged mum of two. Checking in with familiar faces – Jesse and Céline from Richard Linklater’s Before movies, for example; or in this case, Bridget Jones and her disreputable band of booze buddies – feels somehow more cherishable when those faces reflect the same rough patches and tough times we all endure.
It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Renée Zellweger first stumbled on to our screens as the gauche, accident-prone klutz Bridget Jones. And, in common with the core friendships that define us, our relationship with the character has evolved and deepened. The 2001 Bridget of Bridget Jones’s Diary was an insecure hot mess fuelled by vat-sized glasses of house white (or “party petrol” as Sally Phillips’s Shazza pithily describes it). Today’s Bridget achieved her happy-ever-after fairytale ending. She married Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), had two adorable kids and moved barely a yoga mat’s distance from Hampstead Heath, only to have it all snatched away. Mark, we learn, was killed while on a humanitarian mission in Sudan.
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Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy review – giant laughs for Hugh Grant but weepie sequel is strangely dazed
Renée Zellweger looks as if she’s thinking of something else in weird fourquel that sees our heroine choosing between new suitors Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The last Bridget Jones film – ...The Guardian - Feb. 12 -
What to stream: Bridget Jones returns, 'Yellowjackets' reappears and Alessia Cara sings about love
Renée Zellweger returning to one of her most indelible roles in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” and Questlove offering the definitive documentary on funk crossover star Sly Stone are some of ...ABC News - Feb. 10 -
Granny pants and situationships: Lessons Bridget Jones taught me in my 20s
Grab your diary and your ice cream - here are Bridget's relatable wisdoms for those trying to survive adulthood.BBC News - Feb. 8 -
It's the Beast Games finale, and Bridget Jones is back: What to watch this week
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Essex Boys murder convictions being reviewed again
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‘They were trying to do 200 different poses during power cuts’: Bridget Jones director takes on The Joy of Sex
In the 1970s a ‘nude biologist brandishing a cigar’ wrote a game-changing sex manual. Now, ‘Shazza’ is putting his story on the big screen. Sex positivity, polyamory, threesomes: they may not be ...The Guardian - Feb. 9 -
The new Bridget Jones film shows the messy, funny, mistake-filled reality of widowhood | Stacey Heale
I lost my own husband at a young age. It’s rare (and v.g.) to see a heroine trying to live joyfully despite her grief. Bridget Jones is back and once again blazing a new path, this time as a widow. ...The Guardian - 5d -
New Bridget Jones film breaks UK box office rom-com record
Bridget's return also proved more popular in the UK than Captain America: Brave New World this weekend.BBC News - 2d -
Afflicted with liberal angst in the age of Trump? Take a leaf from Bridget Jones’s diary | Rafael Behr
The new movie wasn’t conceived as an allegory of the current international crisis, but for a generation of fans it works on that level . When future generations study creative works that capture ...The Guardian - 1d
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