Despite the fact that Bridget Jones followers are used to zany plot developments, few might have anticipated the twist within the new installment of her movie collection: Miraculously, “Bridget Jones: Mad In regards to the Boy” reconnects with the deft steadiness of bubbliness, excessive jinks and emotion that was the hallmark of the film that began all of it in 2001, “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
That may be a shock, certainly, due to the primary two sequels’ diminishing returns. The earlier entry within the franchise, “Bridget Jones’s Child,” could have ended with our heroine (Renée Zellweger) because the beaming new bride of her soul mate, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), however the franchise itself was in dire straits. Labored and unfunny, that movie, from 2016, appeared like a cinematic dying rattle somewhat than peals of joyous marriage ceremony bells.
Michael Morris’s “Mad In regards to the Boy” opens with Bridget a widow of 4 years — happiness is all the time fleeting, a bittersweet undercurrent that anchors these usually buoyant motion pictures.
She is as messy and raveled as ever, the sort of mother who units pasta on hearth and lets her younger youngsters (Mila Jankovic and Casper Knopf) run the home. Thankfully, she nonetheless has the identical supporting buddies (James Callis, Shirley Henderson and Sally Phillips). She additionally continues to hang around with the suave playboy Daniel Cleaver, portrayed, as all the time, by Hugh Grant — how the Bridget Jones motion pictures have, through the years, dealt with this now unpalatable kind qualifies as magic of the very best order. And blessedly, Emma Thompson pops again as Bridget’s gynecologist, announcing “syphilis” in a approach that deserves to start out a thousand TikTok memes.
Nonetheless, it’s time for Bridget to maneuver on and take advantage of her 50s. In brief order, she falls into the toned arms of the 29-year-old Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall, “The White Lotus”), who rescues her from an ill-fated try and climb a tree — one among many cases of slapstick within the film, a sensible resolution contemplating Zellweger’s knowledgeable bodily comedy.
As typical for the collection, one other man hovers on the periphery. The place Roxster is described as a “tree Adonis,” the science trainer Mr. Wallaker is named a “whistle-obsessed fascist.” It is a suspense-free recycling of the outdated Mark-Daniel antagonism, however no one will complain, particularly since Mr. Wallaker is performed by a Chiwetel Ejiofor so effortlessly charming, you marvel why it took so lengthy for him to land a lead in a rom-com.
“Mad In regards to the Boy” is pretty fleet-footed when coping with one other franchise perennial: Bridget’s — and by extension, pretty or not, Zellweger’s — relationship together with her physique. This manifests most visibly in a lip-serum injection gone awry, however in some way the movie sticks the touchdown after what might have been an uncomfortable pirouette.
Nearly 1 / 4 of a century in, the Bridget Jones motion pictures are coalescing into an evocative portrayal of a personality coming to phrases with each her imperfections and her strengths in actual time, a bit like François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel collection, which adopted that character from teenage truant in “The 400 Blows” (1959) to newly divorced man in “Love on the Run” (1979). I’m now trying ahead to seeing Bridget as a madcap grandmother.
Bridget Jones: Mad In regards to the Boy
Rated R for saucy language and fulfilling intercourse. Working time: 2 hours 4 minutes. Watch on Peacock.
