In “Bridget Jones 4”, Letting Go Isn’t the Same as Letting It Go.
A little behind the scenes: I originally conceived of this blog to formalize some of the film criticism that I’ve been writing for several years. I would take what I thought were some of my stronger pieces, polish them, and publishing them here. I unintentionally doubled-down on this when I re-wrote my artist biography after graduate school and decided to reference this blog, and specifically a piece about—the at the time forthcoming—fourth “Bridget Jones” film. Circumstances and plans change, and I missed my window to publish that entry as I imagined. Instead, I’ve reconsidered that piece and reshaped it reflect how my thoughts on the film evolved from over the past year, from last summer to this.
Pride and Prejudice has been the preeminent cultural text of my life since the summer before 8th grade. I’ve held steadfast to my love for a decade and a half. I also have a confession—I don’t have any memory of watching the pivotal-in-television-history and apex of long-form drama that is the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I know I watched it in the eighth grade, because I rewatched it in the ninth grade with my best friend with homemade (box) scones (mix), but I don’t have a firm memory of watching Pride and Prejudice for the first time.
But I can tell you all about the first time I watched Bridget Jones’ Diary.
It was on a Friday night in September of 2011, also 8th grade. My mom had rented some movies from Movie Gallery (this young Millennial does remember those!) for us to watch together and selected Bridget Jones’ because she assumed I would like it, being based on Jane Austen and all that. It sounds naïve to argue you can select one of the most seminal texts of your life in the 8th grade, but unlike Bridget, it didn’t take me 365 days to identify Bridget Jones’ Diary as one. My all-time favorite film is Shakespeare in Love, but I’ve watched that somewhere between 10-20 times, preferring to view it annually on my birthday, and not once more in between. Tom Stoppard’s screenwriting brilliance affects me more when treated as a rarity.
But I’ve seen Bridget Jones’ Diary in its entirely hundreds of times. In fragmented viewings, YouTube clips, and in the background, even more. Bridget is the multi-purpose film I watch when I’m happy, sad, want to laugh, need to cope with rejection, or want to watch something but am too indecisive to decide. Chasing the feeling of watching Bridget for the first time isn’t the point; the point is that watching Bridget and Mark fall in love for the first time is one of my favorite stories to watch on film, and each time I watch it or part of it, I get just as giddy and smile just as wide when Colin Firth wraps Renee Zellweger in his coat in the middle of snow-covered London.
Not everyone connects with Bridget Jones. The Guardian wrote a thoughtful piece a while back on how middle- and upper-class woman connect more with Bridget than women of color. The reasons are valid, and if that’s you, I respect that and I am not here to convince you to change your mind. But I feel such a strong connection with Bridget the character because despite her social faux pas, the pressure she feels to be a certain weight, her inability to orate on the spot, and that she’s a thirty-something with no serious dating history, it all turns out fine, Mr. Darcy still picks her over everyone else. I like to live in a world, however temporary, that I can ramble-on from anxiety and overshare, not have abs and legs like the gym influencers on Instagram and still end up with a lawyer birthed from Jane Austen’s mind.
I would really like for this fourth film to be good, and maybe it will have its redeeming qualities. It could very well have something meaningful to say about moving forward when the most stabilizing force in your life disappears. It could be that, but it’s also not going to be a Bridget Jones’ movie.
The Mark Darcy—the Pride and Prejudice modernization—Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy—is what makes Bridget different from other British romantic comedies. Bridget isn’t just a woman failing at dating until she finds the right guy, she’s a woman failing at dating until she finds Mr. Darcy. Take Darcy out of the equation and you strip the story of the plotline that ties it to its original source material. Watching Bridget and Mark fall in love according to the arc Jane Austen created in 1813 is why we come to Bridget in the first place. Remove Mark from the story and we’re left with a woman navigating the dating scene with all its pits and valleys, and there are an innumerable number of stories like that. I return to Bridget time and again because I don’t want to watch those, I want to watch a specific formulation of the romantic comedy.
Bridget’s story ended in 2001 when Mark cocoons Bridget in the snow. They finally got together with the understanding of how Bridget’s social ineptitude balance’s Mark’s self-seriousness, and Mark’s rule-abiding and general competency gives Bridget stability in life. The second film attempted to contribute something new to their story by asking if these two people would really be compatible—would they really stay in love or would their vastly different personal habits create a wedge between them? It was a good question, but one the film bungled immensely by the film’s prerogative to maintain Daniel Cleaver as a character at play, and an absurd (and racist) Thailand storyline. The third film did a Force Awakens kind of reset by re-creating the circumstances of the first film by requiring Bridget and Mark to fall in love again, but why watch a clone when the original exists?
Despite two missteps, the producers won’t recognize that Bridget’s story ended a long time ago but insist going through the charade again, as if third time’s the charm. The track record doesn’t support that, nor does an understanding of what made the first film successful in the first place. Our brains are programmed to want to keep us happy, at ease, peaceful, do the things we enjoy. By that logic, more of a good thing would seem to satisfy that demand. But more of a good thing has double-meanings: the original thing has to be good, and the thing that follows has to be equally as good. The sequels haven’t pulled their weight, and instead of everyone recognizing that, have stubbornly chosen to keep taking swings at the old block. Perseverance is good in many fields, but sequel/prequel production is not one of them. Bridget Jones’ Diarywas perfect, just as it was.
That’s what I planned to write, anyway. Even before the trailer was published, since the movie was announced, I convinced myself Mad About the Boy would turn out terribly. There was no reason to believe differently. If anything, I was saddened that the director of Better Call Saul’s best episodes was wasting his talents and forcing me to watch a prize horse beaten to death for the third time.
But Mad About the Boy is pretty great. If the gravity of how painful that is to write isn’t already clear, let me reassure you it is. Over the last 15 years, I’ve become accustomed to standing on principle of my own belief that Colin Firth’s presence is integral to Bridget’s success: a good Bridget Jones film is synonymous with Colin Firth’s presence because his casting is what has given Bridget it’s boost of popularity and persistence in rom-com film culture.
Michael Morris (director), Fielding (writer), and company, made a very good Bridget Jones film without Colin Firth. Mark Darcy makes two brief appearances, via a flashback and Bridget’s memory. Just as Bridget learns to live without Mark and discovers you can love someone, not despite Mark being gone, but in addition to, I realized that I could enjoy—and maybe one day love—a Bridget Jones film without Colin Firth. Bridget finding happiness with Mr. Walliker doesn’t diminish her marriage; finding joy in watching Mad About the Boy doesn’t diminish my love for the original film, but rather, I can love the original and I can enjoy this one, without canceling one another out. And just as Scott Walliker is not Mark Darcy, nor is he trying to be a replacement of, he just happens to have more than a few similarities, Bridget 4 is not the original, nor is it trying to replicate the best parts of the original film; it is its own film but with more than a few aesthetic and tonal (and even cinematic) callbacks to the original film.
Instead of copying and pasting story beats from the 2001 film, the dinner party, the pajamas, the blue-soup-and-orange-marmalade martinis, Bridget’s Netflix password (cue Celine Dion), the return of the red diary, are all nostalgic touches to recall Bridget’s humor. Morris and company adapted Bridget’s humor, awkwardness, and antics to 2025 so that they felt like new jokes, still in line with Bridget’s sensibilities, without being re-trods or stretches—that’s the trick to legacy sequels. It’s not about recreating the story beats from the first film but identifying what about them makes them joyful and rewatchable and re-imagining those emotions for new circumstances in a new time.
There’s no logical reason for Hugh Grant to be in this film. Why on Earth would you invite the man who cheated on your twice and slept with your husband’s (first) fiancée to babysit your children? It’s his humor and presence that sets us to the mood and returns us world of the original. Especially in that very good opening scene, Bridget and Daniel’s banter lets us know the ship is back on course despite two decades that have elapsed. His inclusion is successful because he recreates the specific style of humor from the first film, without redoing the same jokes, while also demonstrating growth and maturity . . . sort of. Bridget’s grown up (sort of), he hasn’t. She feels affection for his charms and lack of maturity but has grown enough to not fall for them. He’s still the same cad he was twenty years ago. Watching them be authentically themselves, free from having to repeat their rendezvous for a third time, lets us enjoy their back-and-forth and Zellweger’s and Grant’s comedic skills because that’s what was enjoyable about his character: he’s an awful person, and probably an awful publisher too, but we can’t help but laugh because the sleaziness is so absurd.
Through the duration of the film, a white owl perches outside the children’s windows watching over them day and night, as Mark Darcy avatar. Unable to intervene during all of Bridget’s mishaps and struggles, he nevertheless stays a constant presence, reminding Bridget and the kids that he’s still there. But in the final scene, seeing the kids tucked in bed and Bridget with Scott Walliker, he knows they’re going to be okay, and flies away. It would be unfair for Bridget to cling to him the rest of her life and unable to ever enjoy having a partner again. Because for Bridget it’s not that a new love is invalidating, love how we survive grief. Bridget let Mark Darcy go, it’s okay for me to as well. . . just not too much.
