Starring: Renée Zellweger, Leo Woodall, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 124 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2025
Reviewer: Ann Rennie
| 
| 
Bridget Jones navigates life as a widow and single mum with the help of her family, friends, and former lover, Daniel.
Bridget Jones is back in signature form. Four years later, she is still grieving the death of her husband Mark (Firth) and her life is busy with her two children Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic) whose performances add something real and touching to the warm craziness in their scenes of family life. Bridget is in a slump, so her friends suggest she needs to get back on the dating scene. She herself realises that perhaps going back to her old job as a TV producer may also refocus her and get her out of her pyjamas before midday. She has to rebrand herself.
I really enjoyed this film. I also enjoyed the two martinis I consumed on arrival at the Melbourne premiere. Pretty frothy young things posed in front of the neon lights which picked out signature phrases that have entered the language such as ‘I like you just the way you are’ and ‘skirt off sick’. This is for the Insta age.
Zellweger plays Bridget true to form. She is appealing, goofy, good-hearted and domestically inept. We are privy to her ripe internal monologue as she does one thing and says something completely different while attempting to enforce standards of language and behaviour at home. She questions her mothering capabilities. She does the school run, running the gauntlet of judgment from the carpark mafia. Here she meets Mr Wallaker (Ejiofor), the science teacher, whose use of a whistle as a mode of discipline becomes a running gag.
Playing with the children in a park, the three of them get caught up high in the branches of a tree and Mr Wallaker and another man offer to help them climb down safely. This other man, Roxter, (Woodall) is young and handsome, eye candy, not only for Bridget, but all the school mums, especially his white shirt dive which has echoes of Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice TV series.
In fact, watching the film closely there are lots of nods to the previous films in this franchise and I particularly liked the old gang of friends, Tom (James Callis), Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Shazzer (Sally Phillips) still there in their support roles, giving advice, drinking, ageing disgracefully and with lots of laughter. The smug marrieds interrogate the widow, Bridget, and, of course, Daniel Cleaver, louche and charming, is a hip Uncle Daniel to the children. Bridget’s father (Jim Broadbent) is now dead, but there is a lovely flashback as he gives her some parting advice from his hospital bed. Her mother (Gemma Jones) is living in a retirement home and still giving Bridget advice over the phone.
Bridget dips her toe in the dating pool and a flirtatious texting starts with Roxter. He is a good 20 years younger than she is and she agrees happily enough that she might be about 35 to his 29. Big little lies. She enjoys a lovely – and physical – romance with Roxter and then is ghosted by him, a casual cruelty, made in a comment about what passes for the dating scene today. In the second half of the film, she accompanies Mr Wallaker on a camping excursion and proves her mettle.
During the course of the film Bridget gets a bad case of Botox. Her doctor, Dr Rawlings, is played with caustic wit by Emma Thompson. Characters from the past appear reassuringly and new ones add colour, Talitha (Josette Simon) as a morning TV diva and Chloe (Nico Parker), the uber-organised nanny, as well as Rebecca (Isla Fisher) and Nicolette (Leila Farzad) who represent all things Bridget is not.
If there is a theme to this movie it is about living, getting on with it, not dropping out of life, but seeing the wonder and magic in it, despite the hurt and heartache. There are a number of poignant moments in the film and some laugh-out loud lines and visual treats. I had tears in my eyes when Billy sang ‘I’d do anything’ at the school Christmas concert. He had been so afraid of forgetting his father. There are some lighter lessons on the soul versus science divide and how one’s views can be changed because of the people we meet. Beauty can be found in the spirit of another person.
For the Bridget who was grieving the loss of her husband, life changes into one of hope and joy, although there are missteps along the way. The final Christmas scene is wonderful and I am sure I saw young Billy wearing a smaller version of the knitted Christmas jumper his father wore when he first met Bridget all those years and films ago.
This is a film for Bridget Jones’ fans and for anyone who enjoys a comedic movie in that particular British vein. I have already recommended it to my four sisters, a bit of froth and bubble with the odd serious and truthful insight. I even began to feel a touch tender for the ageing playboy Daniel when he asks Bridget to be his next of kin when he has a heart scare. Yes, he has one!
Make sure you stay as the credits run to see a selection of stills from the previous movies. It reminds us why Bridget Jones is still a legend.
12 Random Films…
