Do we really want to know what Bridget Jones is up to twenty-four years after she entered our lives? Now there is an element of calmness in her comportment. Perhaps she understands life better now than she did earlier. Perhaps we have become more tolerant of her intermittent outbursts.
Bridget Jones, as played by Renée Zellweger for the fourth time, is grieving for her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). It is interesting to see the deceased spouse as a ghost in this film, during the same week when Salman Khan’s spouse too ghosted him in Sikandar. Not that there is any comparison.
On the top, Bridget Jones looks like a goofy late-date satire about a widow being goaded by her well-meaning but meddlesome friends into getting back on the dating route. Underneath, there is a bedrock of poignancy in Bridget’s midlife crisis, as her two young children miss their father and don’t want a replacement Daddy.
Hugh Grant, however, does a fabulous job of being a surrogate father to Bridget’s kids as she does her own thing. The most likeable aspect of the fourth film in the series is Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver and his rapport with Bridget. Over the years, they have moved from being lovers to besties without missing a beat. The credit for preserving their evolving relationship must go entirely to Daniel. He babysits and parents her children in her absence and in her presence.
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It is a fabulous rapport, superbly executed by Hugh Grant. At some point, he is in the hospital and aware of his yawning loneliness: he has no one to call his own except Bridget, who is trying to focus on finding love again, and not quite hitting bull’s eye.
There are two men whom she is getting close to.
It is good to see Leo Woodall, the global heartthrob from the phenomenal series One Day, back as Bridget’s… err, toyboy, though I suspect she wouldn’t really approve of that term. Woodall, I am afraid, brings nothing to his young but sensible character Roxster (yes, that’s his name!). He plays the character as a single flat note.
Roxster shows an unusual level of maturity in his affinity to Bridget but messes up the potential relationship by unwittingly age-shaming Bridget, and, worse, ghosting her. This leaves her with Scott Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), her son’s schoolteacher. Scott comes across as a bit of a whistleblower, quite literally. His teacher-like bearing seems annoying initially. But Bridget likes his stability and the fact that he gets along with her children. Do we.
Bridget Jones 4: Mad About The Boy shows that the series has matured, mellowed, and metamorphosed along with its protagonist. Bridget is no more a whining, hysterical dater. She knows her responsibilities as a mother. And she knows her men too. For now, that is enough.
