Do not watch Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy if you have scheduled plans for after it ends. You’ll need at least two hours to recuperate from what you assumed would be a shitty age-gap rom-com that overworks its already-frazzled heroine. Because you will be bawling — bawling! Your hair will look even worse than Bridget’s after a life-altering-ly good shag. As it turns out, the fourth Bridget Jones movie is not really about getting turned inside out by a hot 29-year-old. It’s about growing older and living through grief. The familiar old faces are there to help our girl as she soldiers on, even the ghost of her late husband, Mark Darcy. Several decades later, we find that even though life around her has changed, Bridget Jones is still the same: loved for who she is because it is impossible for her to be who she is not.
Cat Zhang, culture writer: What were your expectations going into the movie? Were you surprised?
Olivia Craighead, blogger: I had very low expectations going in (No. 4 in a series, dumped on Peacock) and was surprised by how much I loved it. I cried three times.
Brooke Marine, deputy culture editor: I’d seen the trailer, so I knew Mark Darcy was dead. Then I saw people handing out packs of tissues at the premiere screening, and I figured it might be a little emotional, but I did not realize it was going to be a REAL TEARJERKER. I think it’s really stupid of them not to release this in theaters, too … groups of middle-aged women, young couples, and mother-daughter duos would absolutely pay money to see this out in the world!
Emily Gould, features writer: Speaking as someone who has read not just the book this movie is based on but ALL of the books and the original BJD (Bridget Jones’s Diary) at least five times, I found this installment much more true to the book than the others. The first BJ movie made her too much of a sad sack. In the book, Bridget’s life and friends and job are fun and exciting! Though very, very drunk.
O.C.: I like that it’s less about the romantic aspect of Bridget’s life (although obviously that’s there) and more about how hard it can be to get your groove back at a certain age. Your dad and husband are dead, your kids are loud, and you are trying to get your career back. That’s hard! AND you get ghosted by the hot guy who works at the park?
E.J. Dickson, senior writer: It was so much better than similar “middle-aged women getting their groove back” type movies like The Idea of You, etc. It wasn’t the typical narrative of older women feeling sexually invisible and being rejuvenated by the love of a sexy young guy.
C.Z.: I appreciate that she doesn’t get saved by a man. She struggles and gets uplifted by her community, which includes the incorrigible womanizer she once dated, who is still a total cad but loves her.
Katja Vujić, staff writer: In that final New Year’s scene, I teared up and thought: This is what I want my life to look like at that age. A house full of loved ones celebrating together.
B.M.: I appreciated that there were so many nods to the first movie …Bridget running into the snow to kiss Mr. Wallaker just like she did with Mark Darcy at the end of the first movie and him saying “please just call me Scott”…. her control underwear or whatever they called it in the first one … her jammies!!! Oh, another nod to Mark Darcy (specifically Pride & Prejudice Darcy) is the scene where Roxster jumps in the pool to save the dog and comes out all wet like a good golden retriever boyfriend. Bridget still doesn’t walk, she waddles. She’s still a mess after all these years and we love her for it.
E.D.: I absolutely LOVED how her relationship with Daniel Cleaver has evolved in this one. Not just because Hugh Grant is the most charming person alive and can basically do no wrong whenever he’s on-screen but because it struck me as very realistic. As someone who is friends with some of my exes, this is how those types of relationships mature and deepen over time — they start out as romantic and end up becoming something much more complex and arguably more beautiful.
Chantal Fernandez, features writer: I left this film feeling like Hugh Grant is both the best actor in the world and the most charming man alive. He nails all of his (too few) scenes.
O.C.: Wait, I also need Chiwetel Ejiofor to be the romantic lead in another rom-com ASAP. I didn’t know he could be funny like that! And since he’s such a good actor, he can also carry the emotional “magic” stuff without it seeming lame.
C.Z.: I like that Bridget’s relationship with Mr. Wallaker proceeds slowly. Because when you’re hurting, or lonely, what you need is grace. And when someone gives it to you, it’s touching. But that doesn’t mean you’re meant to be in each other’s lives forever — it doesn’t mean you should date. It just means they did a nice thing. A beautiful, nice thing.
B.M.: This movie is so clever and so well acted, with so many amazing cameos, that it made me really appreciate how important Bridget Jones is for the culture. We already knew this, but I think I needed to be reminded. I mean, hello! Celia Imrie appearing in the background of a FaceTime for eight seconds?! Our girl Nico Parker?! Moaning Myrtle and all of Bridget’s friends still looking the same! Dolly Wells! Leila Farzad from the criminally underwatched (in this country anyway) I Hate Suzie!! Isla Fisher randomly being in it (though it seems like maybe her role was cut down), too … and can we have a little commotion for Emma Thompson’s hair! I think it’s safe to say we can pretend the second and third installments of this franchise no longer exist in our minds.
E.D.: You know what else I loved about the “Darcy dying” narrative? Like, obviously they had to do it to give Bridget the chance to have a new love interest/get her groove back, just like And Just Like That … did with Carrie Bradshaw. But unlike in AJLT, her grief was a through-line throughout the movie and not just a convenient plot device. It was a gut punch every time they mentioned Darcy, but that’s exactly how grief works.
E.G.: I appreciated that her kids were on screens and annoying. Very real. Perhaps too real.
C.F.: They very effectively used Darcy’s appearances, too. God these Brits really know how to push my emotional buttons. A British schoolboy singing? That’s another tissue box gone.
K.V.: When he “appeared” during the son’s recital at the end I SOBBED.
C.Z.: There’s no way this movie would have worked if they were American.
E.G.: Shops and cafés are really much more charming and cozy in London than here. Like, U.K. Pret is a totally different thing from U.S. Pret.
B.M.: Costa Coffee mentioned.
EJD: I didn’t love that they made Roxster’s sole personality trait “garbage.” Like how Ken’s job is beach.
K.V.: LOL, hot men’s jobs must be random nouns!
B.M.: I love that the Leo Woodall character wasn’t really actually doing anything bad, he was just a millennial/Gen-Z cusp man interested in dating an older woman … I thought for a second that there would be a twist that “Roxby, but you can call me Roxster” would turn out to be the person named Graham, whom Nico Parker (the nanny named Chloe) seemed to be dating and growing distant from, because who is actually named Roxby or Roxster … Thankfully that didn’t happen because Bridget has been through enough. The whole audience went “oohhh” the moment he first took off his shirt, though.
E.G.: I was more into Leo Woodall when he was evil and trashy in The White Lotus. Clean cut does not suit him.
B.M.: I also cried when Roxster finally, after ghosting Bridget because he’s 29, so, duh, of course he ghosted instead of maturely responding to her texts and asking for space, ultimately realized he was ready to be with Bridget and settle down with her kids, and she told him she wished that she had a time machine so that he could catch up and then broke up with him while she was at work. OMG. The right decision ultimately but God.
C.Z.: Do you think the movie was effective at exploring the pressure that women face today?
B.M.: I think so! I mean, when she yells “I don’t want to be a mummy right now” — that sort of fed-up place you reach when everything is just too much … and you have to scream but you can’t yell at THEM.
EJD: Yes, it felt very real. The completely contradictory advice, the constant demands on your time and attention, the resentment toward the smug zoomer with perfect abs who tells you how to raise your kids — all very real.
O.C.: I really liked seeing the dynamic at school with the other moms, which is something I feel like I don’t see that often on-screen but I’m sure is super common IRL. Also, Renée is a real one for letting her hair look realistically shitty for 99 percent of the movie.
K.V.: I think the contrast between her and her “perfect nanny” was powerful — really made it clear to me how much easier children seem than they actually are. And, like, of course you can take care of someone else’s home and children when you’re getting eight hours of sleep every night!
EJD: Olivia, I absolutely LOVED the dynamic with the other moms. Perfect depiction of how just because you have kids doesn’t mean you have anything in common with the other people who have children who have to be in your life for 18 years. And contrasting that with how all of her friends are child-free, but there isn’t like a tremendous gulf between them, they meet on each other’s levels.
E.G.: Her drop-off in pajamas reminded me of I HATE SUZIE … criminally underappreciated show.
B.M.: Agree. I also love that it was just the pajama top from the first movie paired with sweatpants this time because presumably your pants from 20 years ago don’t fit. That one set of pajamas you keep for way too long … real.
O.C.: Can I ask which part made everyone cry? For me it was her with her dad in the hospital when he tells her she can’t just survive, she has to live. Not me literally crying again typing that out …
B.M.: Daniel realizing he needs Bridget in a very specific way that is not romantic and that they’re sort of platonic soul mates, Miniature Darcy singing at the school holiday show in a surprise performance to show how much he loved his mum, Miniature Darcy telling Mr. Wallaker that he’s worried he might forget his dad, Miniature Darcy wearing his dads’s reindeer jumper from the first film, the owl flying away …
O.C.: Colin Firth low-key does look like an owl. Or they found an owl that looks a lot like him.
K.V.: I cried buckets during the recital scene and during the New Year’s scene and when the owl flew away, PHEW. I teared up in the scene with Bridget’s dad, and also when she was watching old newscasts about Mark Darcy’s death, and also when she went to see Hugh Grant in the hospital!
C.Z.: I can’t remember if I cried, but I thought Bridget going to sing one of the scared kids to sleep during the school trip was so sweet — you may not ever be able to give “enough” to your kids, but you give way more than you think you can to the people around you.
O.C.: What does she say? “I can’t do Puccini, but I can do some early Take That”?
B.M.: The fact that she went on the trip knowing those kids were gonna want marshmallows … hero.
K.V.: Okay but sooooo funny that Atticus and Eros get Puccini sung to them, lmfao.
B.M.: Even the simple fact that the posh twins in school are called Atticus and Eros … lmao.
EJD: The thing that I kept thinking throughout the entire movie is that there’s all this talk about like “real” and “raw” depictions of motherhood — like Night Bitch is a very different movie obviously, but it touches on some of the same themes as this one does. And when people say things like that re: movies about women over 40 it just kind of makes me roll my eyes? But for some reason when people call Bridget Jones “real” I’m totally onboard. She is real!
O.C.: Vulture covered this, but I think it’s good writing plus the fact that we’ve literally watched Bridget grow up for the last 20 years. She’s truly insane in the first one, and now she’s still kooky but she’s also competent and self assured and has gone through shit.
C.F.: What’s so real to me about her is not her messiness but her childlike personality, even after all these years. You really don’t see women like that on-screen very often. They always have to “grow up.”
EJD: Those are both really good points and totally true. She doesn’t become a different person as a result of having different life experiences/being forced by virtue of having kids, losing a partner, etc., to become more responsible. She’s still just the same silly billy she always was.
O.C.: They really should keep making these movies every ten years or so.
C.Z.: What would you want to see in the next one?
O.C.: I think we should wait until the youngest kid is about to go to college and she’s on the precipice of being an empty nester.
B.M.: I wanna see her navigate how to help her ADHD daughter get through her A-levels and her son in his early 20s starting to date.
C.F.: As long as she doesn’t return to a Thai prison, I’m down for whatever happens.