“Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy” Reviews Have Split Critics Down The Middle

“There is no Bridget Jones without Renée Zellweger, and the force of her performance and obvious admiration for the role do plenty to skate over any off-kilter beats (a few odd subplots, Bridget’s total lack of concern around money, etc.) with effervescence and pluck. Loving Bridget means wanting to see her succeed. With Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, she does that and more.”

“It may come as a surprise that dishevelled is also the most emotional Bridget Jones entry to date […] On the downside, the movie drags a bit in its overlong two-hour runtime. And although original director Sharon Maguire’s first and third films remain the best (and funniest) overall, there’s still enough to enjoy here.”

“It’s warm and comforting and great to have the gang back together, but at times its humour feels a little reliant on yesteryear too, with some scripted comedic moments seeming dated or done before.”

“If Bridget can gallivant with a doe-eyed stud 25 years her junior, then surely she’d be up for the sort of wild and dishevelled, drunken and crazy-stupid, delightfully embarrassing antics that powered the winningly debauched instalment[…] But that, alas, is not the kind of movie this is. It’s not another unhinged Bridget bash — more like a hearts-and-flowers finale.”

“To paraphrase her own mode of self-criticism, this latest instalment in the saga of hapless London singleton Bridget Jones is v v poor. Michael Morris’s film, adapted from Helen Fielding’s fourth novel, is a bloated, weeping sogfest that blunders laboriously through the established tropes of the series.”

“The Bridget Jones series has frankly run out of steam […] The actors are mostly going through the motions, there is so little chemistry between each of the two lead pairings they resemble a panda being forced to mate with a flamingo, and Renée Zellweger’s performance is starting to look eccentric.”

“If [Bridget Jones’s Baby] was a death knell then Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is the lethal injection itself. It’s devoid of all the natural, irreverent humour of the early movies, focusing on being idyllic fanfiction for middle-aged women who dream in their London townhouses of having a fling with a toyboy.”

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy arrives in UK cinemas on Friday 14 February.