Mad about... Mad About the Boy! Mad about Bridget!

A review from The Torch’s regular reviewer, Val Ruloff

Mad about... Mad About the Boy! Mad about Bridget!

Bridget's back!! The long-awaited fourth Bridget Jones film looks like a winner... and a runaway success all rolled into one! They're queuing at the box office and beyond.

This follow up to Bridget Jones's Baby is already being hailed and feted as the best (and last) in the series since the original Bridget Jones's Diary. The film really works and delivers the goods. Seats are selling out fast!

Screenplay by Bridget creator Helen Fielding, as well as Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan, is very well written, with great storyline and marvellous characterisation. The music score ensures that all the right notes are hit perfectly! The locations represent Bridget's world "just as she is", with attention to details that hark back to past times in Bridget's life and also reference the previous films.

Bridget's chaos is well portrayed... spilling forth with abandon in true Bridget fashion. Renee Zellweger slips into her role with customary aplomb and comfortable familiarity. There's fun and jollity, very funny jokes and lines that generate roars of laughter and much commenting from the audience. There are some great set pieces featuring trees, swimming pool, dancing on stage, loud announcement (not intended) in public, humiliation in shops and handbag spillage mortification. Then, besides all the well-known high jinks territory we get to see Bridget as much more of a grown-up, a mother on her own with a young son and daughter. The film manages to convey a very touching and vivid portrait of loss and grief, as Bridget tries to navigate... and sometimes flounders... her way through the minefields of raising her family as a lone parent, being a stay-at-home Mum, deciding whether to return to her career and gradually embarking upon dates again. Tears spill very readily throughout the course of this film... and they cover the whole gamut of emotions. Happy, joyful tears well up amidst sorrowful, sad tears. It's all here to soak up!

The cast is truly stellar... and especially impressive for the continuity of original cast members all reappearing in Mad About the Boy. This continuity is key, a reunion of old friends, both for the actors in the film and the audience. Bridget's close circle of mates... Shazzer, Jude and Tom, played by Sally Phillips, Shirley Henderson and James Callis respectively... are out in force.

Bridget's parents, Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones, their friend Una Alconbury(Celia Imrie) and Dr Rawlings (Emma Thompson) all appear. Her dear ones rally around faithfully.

Hugh Grant's Daniel Cleaver is back with a bang! New cast members Leo Goodall as Roxster and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mr Walliker make a splash...  and add some bells and whistles! Bridget's children are played by Casper Knopf as Billy and Mila Jankovic as Mabel.

Mark Darcy, Colin Firth, does appear in the film... and is very poignantly present. This very important development in the story is made only marginally more bearable by the fact that some warning has been given by announcement in all the pre-release film publicity.

Look out for a particularly subtle, poignant touch in the final scene, featuring Billy when he's at the New Year's Eve party. It's very special.

Don't forget to stay for all of the credits as they roll at the end... as extra special bonus treats, too!

Suddenly there's a whole new dimension to that lovely refrain....

I'd do anything, for you, dear, anything....