It’s Honestly Really Nice to Get Older With Bridget Jones – Vulture

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.Time has always been ticking by for Bridget Jones. When Renée Zellweger first played Helen Fielding’s chaotic singleton in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, the character was fretting about being a “tragic spinster” at 32, an age in which plenty of Brooklynites are still living with multiple roommates and wondering if they can afford to spring for health insurance. In the second movie, she agonizes over whether Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) is ever going to propose, and by the third, she’s going ahead with an unexpected pregnancy, whether either of the possible fathers opts to be in the picture, because she’s 43 and it might be her only chance. And yet, despite two decades of anxiety about being of a certain age, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy finds our shambolic protagonist having achieved her heteronormative happily-ever-after. She married dashing if emotionally constipated human rights attorney Mark, with whom she has two children, son Billy (Casper Knopf) and daughter Mabel (Mila Jankovic), as well as an adorable row house in North London. At 51, she’s hit the milestones she was so worried about, only to find herself single again anyway — and not because of her drinking, weight, oft-cited verbal incontinence, or any of the other qualities she’s been convinced were holding her back.Five years before the start of the film, which was directed by To Leslie’s Michael Morris, Mark was killed in a bombing in Darfur, and Bridget’s been alone and grieving ever since. And with great fondness for Firth, who turns up as a wistful figment in a handful of scenes, this tragedy is the best thing that could have happened to the franchise. Being born out of a riff on Jane Austen as well as a column in the Independent, Bridget Jones has always been confined to the marriage plot. But while matrimony was a matter of survival for Austen’s characters, for Bridget it has represented something more existential — proof that a modern gal could indeed have it all, despite the unjust societal standards she was constantly colliding with. While Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy repeats some of the motifs from earlier installments, from having Bridget sing and dance along to a song (“Modern Love”) during the opening credits to having her caught between two suitors, what makes the film, which is for reasons unclear being consigned directly to Peacock, so understatedly pleasurable is that, for once, its protagonist feels like she’s off the clock. Bridget may still be a low-key mess who can’t be bothered to brush her own hair and who continues to stumble into small humiliations, but her previous fantasies of dying alone and being eaten by the German Shepherd she doesn’t own have been replaced by the reality of a life where she doesn’t just want to be with anyone, but with someone who’s no longer around.Bridget Jones is finally, indisputably grown up, and so, naturally, what she needs is to have an affair with a younger man, something that’s all the rage among middle-aged movie heroines. Bridget’s beau, played by Leo Woodall, is a graduate student and grounds manager named Roxster who comes to her rescue when she and her children get stuck in a tree on Hampstead Heath, and then tracks her down on a dating app. He’s solicitous, great in bed, and gorgeous — one of the movie’s highlights is a tribute to Colin Firth’s Pride and Prejudice pond scene, though its version takes place at a birthday party, and is as much about confirming Bridget’s desirability to her friend group as it is giving everyone something to gawk at. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is much more about Bridget than it is about love triangles and rom-com shenanigans, though it does also introduce Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scott Wallaker, a handsome, uptight science teacher with whom Bridget has Darcy-esque adversarial relationship. Roxster is less a romantic interest than he is a hunky enrichment exercise, a way for Bridget, who’s spent years feeling like the sexual aspect of her life is over, to rediscover her spark. Scott, in the same way, represents a way for Bridget to consider what it might mean to genuinely open up her life to someone new.As Bridget, Zellweger may not be as dynamic a lead as she once was, but she’s still likable, and able to play the character as more at peace with her mishaps. There’s a scene where, having returned to her job as a TV producer, Bridget dances so that they can rehearse moving the spotlight, and it’s a delightful display of a character finally being comfortable in her own skin. The romantic elements of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy are sweet, but also the most predictable (while other storylines, like Bridget’s hiring of an upsettingly perfect nanny played by Nico Parker, or a scene involving an angry neighbor played by Isla Fisher, feel like unfinished fragments). Where the film really shines is in reuniting Bridget with her faithful friend group (Shirley Henderson, Sally Phillips, and James Callis), her withering gynecologist (Emma Thompson), and, of course, with Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), the red flag-laden lothario who represents everything Bridget knew she shouldn’t be attracted to. Grant’s been having a great run lately — scene-stealing Oompa Loompa, outstanding nightmare atheist in Heretic — but in revisiting this old character, he’s a genuine revelation.His Daniel is still a relentless flirt and a sly reprobate, still handsome and terrible, but he’s also someone who’s aware he’s aged into something “a fraction tragic,” having been unable to build lasting ties with anyone in his life, including his estranged son. Anyone, that is, except Bridget, with whom he has a relationship that time has mellowed into real, touching affection. To be platonic soulmates with your ne’er-do-well ex? Who can relate, and who needs to? Not Bridget Jones, freed from being an everywoman at last, and able to love herself.Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

Source: http://www.vulture.com/article/mad-about-the-boy-review-getting-older-with-bridget-jones.html