BRIDGET JONES:

MAD ABOUT THE BOY

Usually when a movie ‘franchise’ gets to Chapter Four, the scripts get thinner and the acting more perfunctory. Bridget Jones’s fourth outing beats its predecessors hands down – pants down! Passing fifty and widowed by the death of Mister Darcy (Colin Firth), Bridget lets her chums talk her into online dating and immediately hooks up with a toyboy more than twenty years younger (Leo Woodall); he’s not just a sexy hunk, he’s a kind and serious man who bonds with her kids as well as with our heroine. An intense love affair ensues which, of course, has to go wrong so that someone else can have a bash at Bridget. Lecherous old Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) keeps popping up, and there’s the brooding presence of Bridget’s son’s handsome science teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Renée Zellweger immersively and gleefully back into the title role. Bridget is older but not much wiser. She never stops worrying, and yet she juggles her kids, her career, her large and demanding circle of friends (Sally Phillips steals several scenes) and a sweaty love affair. The ghost of Colin Firth is a welcome bonus, as is the only-just-still-living Hugh Grant. Helen Fielding’s script feeds Bridget a near–constant interior monologue, which mostly consists of nonstop swearing; Zellweger gives the f-word fifty shades of nuance.

Michael Morris’s direction is up there with Richard Curtis’s. More than just a romcom, this is a frenetic feel-good festival. If Bridget can sail triumphantly through that worrisome period between youth and middle-age, so can we all (I did, decades ago). There are good times a-plenty. Go for it! And don’t miss this movie.