by Dov Kornits
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Renee Zellweger, Chiwotel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Hugh Grant, Mila Jankovic, Casper Knopf, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent, Sally Phillips, Shirley Henderson, Gemma Jones
Intro:
... fans of the series will love it.
If you love the Bridget Jones franchise, stop reading now and go and get yourself a ticket!
For the rest of us, the fourth installment in the series of films based on Helen Fielding’s books, sees Bridget (Renee Zellweger) living the widow’s life, with Darcy (Colin Firth) killed in a war zone and her time taken up by looking after their two young children.
Bridget is in a glut, and she just needs to get laid according to her many friends. Others suggest that she should go back to work. So, she does both!
In the getting laid department, she hooks up with Roxster (Leo Woodall – the hustler from White Lotus Season 2), a 20something park ranger type. And, without much effort at all, she manages to step back into the world of producing television. Bridget’s renewed zest for life also puts her into the orbit of teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
There’s a lot going on in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and British director Michael Morris (To Leslie, heaps of TV in the US, theatre in England) manages to pull most of the pieces together. The early appearance of Isla Fisher in a cameo as a ‘bad mum’ doesn’t quite work, and the film is too episodic, with various sequences appearing as fan service rather than having a legitimate place in the narrative.
Applying Marxist theory to the whole thing (we know you want us to!), it’s hard to cop Bridget complaining about not having any quiet time due to the kids when they’re at school half the day; whilst she lives in an overpriced terrace in the heart of London. Also, everyone just loves Bridget, old and new, even though she does very little to earn that love. She’s just so cute and ditzy, which may work in a flirtatious situation, but apart from that…
This ain’t no social realism, though, but an adaptation of a book that Helen Fielding wrote after her own husband died prematurely. There’s a somberness to this newest Bridget Jones, but it’s quickly superseded by silliness, whether it’s the charming rapport between Bridget and Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver, or Zellweger’s Chaplinesque goofiness. It doesn’t quite earn the bittersweet ending that it goes for, but it’s certainly a valid try, and fans of the series will love it.
