'Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy' Is the Best One Yet

There’s a whole generation of women who grew up with Bridget Jones. We read Helen Fielding’s popular novels. We watched the movies. We followed Bridget (Renée Zellweger) as a single woman in her thirties, obsessed with her weight, counting her cigarette and alcohol intake, struggling with her career, and not always making the best choices about her love life. We read endless stories about how Zellweger gained 30 pounds to play the title character.

Now nearly nine years after Bridget Jones’s Baby, the third movie in the franchise, Zellweger is back in Bridget Jones: Mad About About the Boy,  along with Colin Firth as Bridget’s beloved Mark Darcy, Hugh Grant as the charming and dastardly Daniel Cleaver and Emma Thompson as hilariously understanding but exasperated Dr. Rawlings. Like the women who grew up reading her, Bridget is now older, slightly wiser, and facing the twists and turns life brings.

Spoiler alert for those of you who somehow avoided the news that first broke when Mad About About the Boy was published in 2013: it begins with the revelation that Bridget’s husband, Mark, was killed four years earlier when he was on a humanitarian mission in Sudan. Fret not, Firth's cameos (albeit in ghost form) now exist only in Bridget’s memory; he is more perfect than ever. (Anyone who has seen this scene in Pride & Prejudice would not disagree with this take.)

Amid grief, Bridget is raising their two young children, nine-year-old Billy (Casper Knopf) and four-year-old Mabel (Mila Jankovic), while returning to work as a producer on a TV talk show. Billy is struggling, and Mabel asks nearly every man she meets if he will be her new daddy. “It’s not enough to survive. You’ve got to live,” her father (Jim Broadbent, reprising the role he’s played in all Bridget Jones movies) tells her. 

The title reflects Bridget’s summer fling with a much younger man, Roxster (Leo Woodall). Yes, Bridget still looks half put together with her messy hair and haphazard clothes. She wears mismatched pajamas to school drop-offs, facing a bevy of smug, put-together parents. From suddenly finding yourself as a Career Day volunteer to having your time in a parent/teacher conference cut short, Billy and Mabel’s school life rings true. But underneath pratfalls and slapstick moments is a more mature, poignant movie about moving on after the devastating loss of a loved one. “Even though there might be 600,000 words in the human language, the world still struggles to find the right ones when someone you love is gone,” she says. 

Mad About a Boy recreates some of the iconic Bridget Jones moments. The dinner parties don’t have everyone pitying her because she is single; they pity her because she is widowed. She’s still dealing with granny panties and curlers in her hair. She’s still making notes to herself in her diary. Her bevy of friends, including Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson), and Tom (James Callis), are all back to dish out droll advice. Joining them are Bridget’s hyper-efficient nanny, Chloe (Nico Parker), and talk show host Talitha (Josette Simon), who talks about “rebranding” and supplies Bridget with some ill-advised cosmetic advice. Surprisingly, even though she’s touted in the press materials, Isla Fisher is only seen briefly as Bridget’s neighbor, Rebecca. 

Daniel was revealed to still be alive at the end of the 2016 movie, and it’s a delight to have Grant back. Now Daniel and Bridget are just friends. Her children even refer to him as “Uncle Daniel.” Although older, Daniel remains the cad you can’t help but love. He teaches kids how to make a drink called the “Dirty Bitch.” He’s still dating much younger women and making inappropriate sexual comments. It’s a credit to Grant that we can see the real Daniel underneath his outward rogue veneer. Against all odds, in 2025, his character still works.

Woodall, seen recently in Apple TV’s Prime Target, is utterly charming as the 29-year-old who likes Bridget Jones just the way she is... until he wistfully wishes that there was a “time machine” that would allow them to catch up to each other in age. Their relationship isn’t melodramatic or played for laughs—a sign of how the movie franchise has matured along with Bridget. Chiwetel Ejiofor is equally charming as Bill and Mabel’s science teacher, Mr. Walliker, who rules the school with a frequently used whistle. Ejiofor’s on-screen rapport with Zellweger is crackling.

Bridget’s fixation on her weight and obsessive calorie counting wouldn’t play as well today, and Mad About a Boy reflects the changing societal norms. There are no stories about Zellweger gaining weight this time around (thank goodness!), and when Roxter asks if it’s okay to kiss her, Bridget thinks, “Ah, the generation who ask!”

At the center of it all is Zellweger, whose heartfelt and delightful performance carries the film. She’s played this character for a quarter of a century, and her lived-in, authentic performance resonates.

One thing that has also changed since the first movie debuted in 2001 is the advent of streaming. How exactly this movie ended up on Peacock when it’s a Miramax production getting a movie theater release in the UK is a bit of a mystery. It’s too bad because this might be the best Bridget Jones movie yet. 

As Bridget herself might say, it’s v.v. good. 

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is streaming on Peacock.