Film review: Bridget’s back but I’m not mad for it

Life comes full circle for Bridget Jones in the fourth and presumably final chapter of the blockbusting romantic comedy franchise, lovingly adapted from Helen Fielding’s newspaper columns and novels.

For almost a quarter of a century, we’ve witnessed the chaotic London-based singleton, played with Oscar-nominated gusto by Renee Zellweger, careen through her 30s and early 40s, obsessing to a hilariously unhealthy degree about the minutiae of dating, relationships and her career.

Every face plant into Glastonbury mud or spirited descent of a fireman’s pole has been in service of finding someone worthy of her big pants, with whom she can host vicars-and-tarts parties with a buffet of turkey curry and blue soup as a fully paid member of the smug marrieds.

In Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, Zellweger’s indomitable heroine has fully realised her happy-ever-after and emerged the other side as a widow with cherubic children and tearful memories of late husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).

Fielding’s script, co-written by Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan, cajoles now-50-something Bridget into new minefields - motherhood, dating apps, school runs - with a familiar array of family and friends to help her back to her feet when she invariably stumbles and falls.

For me, the opening stretch of director Michael Morris’s picture lacks bittersweet harmony between mournfulness and mirth, but thankfully finds its rhythm thanks to Zellweger’s impeccable skills as a physical comedian and simmering sexual tension with Leo Woodall.

By contrast, screen chemistry with Chiwetel Ejiorfor’s rival is inert.

Many supporting characters are superfluous. Isla Fisher’s idolised neighbour Rebecca warrants one throwaway scene and Celia Imrie’s social butterfly Una barely flutters. They manifest here as fan service.

The fourth film is the longest in terms of running time, and feels it.

Bridget is raising nine-year-old Billy (Casper Knopf) and four-year-old Mabel (Mila Jankovic) with the help of incorrigible godfather Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) and unflappable nanny Chloe (Nico Parker).

Best friends Shazza (Sally Phillips), Tom (James Callis) and Jude (Shirley Henderson) encourage Bridget to set up a profile on a popular dating app.

Enthusiastic younger man Roxster (Woodall) pursues Bridget to the envy of female work colleagues but her son’s officious science teacher, Scott (Ejiofor), also seems interested.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is a satisfying but uneven resolution that falls frustratingly short of the irresistible charm of the 2001 film (v. v. funny as Bridget might scrawl).

Zellweger wrings every giggle and sob from her character’s vacillations, with sparkling support from Grant and Emma Thompson’s returning gynaecologist, who gallop through uproarious scenes with relish.

A striking imbalance of emotional investment in Woodall and Ejiofor’s competing paramours makes Bridget’s ultimate choice a far tougher sell than it should be.

Roses are red but I feel a little blue.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, in cinemas, Feb 12, cert 15a.