It was a long and winding road that led Bridget Jones to her happily ever after—marrying her long-time squeeze, Mark Darcy, and starting a family together. The pair enjoyed several years of marital bliss and welcomed two precocious children into the world, Billy and Mabel.
But sometimes, “happily ever after” is less permanent than you’d expect. Bridget knows that all too well.
Mark, you see, has died. Killed during a humanitarian mission to the Sudan. And that left Bridget a grieving widow with two young children. It’s been four years since his death, and Bridget is still picking up the pieces. Her family and friends tell her that she needs to get back out on the dating scene, that meeting someone new will help her move on from her grief.
But Mark was the love of Bridget’s life. The father of her children. She’s not sure she wants to move on.
“Can you survive?” Bridget’s father had asked her after Mark had passed. When she tells him that, yes, she’ll survive, he says, “It’s not enough to survive, you’ve got to live.”
All right, fine. Bridget will do a little living. She dusts off that old, familiar diary. She returns to her job as a television producer. And she even meets a potential new beau, Roxster, a garbologist who is very much her junior.
Though her life as a single mother often proves frenetic, Bridget loves her children and cherishes motherhood, seeing it as the only part of life that still has Mark in it. Through her memories, we see that Mark was a loving father as well.
When her daughter, Mabel, asks if Bridget misses “Dada” some of the times, Bridget replies that she misses him “all of the times.” Bridget wonders how Billy will learn how to be a man without his father’s example. The family makes cards for Mark and sends them skyward attached to balloons.
Bridget and Roxster meet when the young man helps Bridget’s children (and Bridget herself) down from a tree. When they start dating, Roxster treats Billy and Mabel well. Mr. Wallaker, Billy’s science teacher, also proves to be a strong role model and father figure for the boy.
When Daniel, Bridget’s lecherous ex-lover, has a health scare, it gives him perspective about the choices he’s made in life. Particularly, he wishes he had committed to having a family, referring to it as “the glory of what might have been.” Bridget encourages him to reconnect with his estranged teenage son.
Billy draws the Earth and its atmosphere for a school project. He includes heaven as the topmost layer—which earns him a C, as his teacher considers heaven nothing more than a “religious construct.” Bridget makes a case for the soul’s existence, but it has nothing to do with God.
Daniel refers to a woman he’s seeing as a “healer.” Someone calls Bridget a “born-again virgin.” Lyrics from David Bowie’s 1983 hit “Modern Love” include the lyrics “gets me to the church on time,” “faith in God and man,” but also references having “no confession, no religion.” A man says, “By all that’s holy.” A woman is compared unfavorably to a nun.
If you look at past Plugged In reviews of the films in the Bridget Jones series, you’ll notice that the Sexual & Romantic Content sections are always quite populous. That won’t change here. For large swaths of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, it’s rare to get a scene that isn’t sexually charged in some way. Much of this content is found in the dialogue: The topic of sex comes up constantly in conversation with Bridget’s friends, coworkers and even in her own internal monologue.
Daniel may be the worst offender: Nearly every sentence that comes out of his mouth is laced with suggestive innuendo. He references his past sexual history with Bridget (and others) often. It’s insinuated that he’s intimately involved with a woman almost 40 years his junior and that he’s estranged from the mother of his child because he slept with her sister. Billy references women with large breasts who had an “epic pillow fight” with Daniel, which raises concerns about what Daniel had exposed Billy to. (Bridget seems no more than nonplussed by this revelation.)
But we also see instances where people do more than just talk about sex. Bridget and Roxster sleep together on their first date. The pair kisses passionately. Clothes are removed, and we see suggestive movements. Though there is no nudity, we see Roxster shirtless and Bridget in a lacy nightgown. Later, Roxster appears naked, save for a bedsheet that covers his critical bits. At a party, women (and men) gawk at Roxster as he emerges from a pool and then removes his shirt. Someone suggestively offers to help the young man out of his wet clothes.
People profess their love for one another. Bridget imagines Mark on several occasions—in one such instance, he tells his wife that she looks beautiful. She engages in relationships with two different men over the course of the film. Someone recommends a “perfect and pretty” nanny to Bridget and implies that husbands would be tempted by her. However, since Bridget is a widow, she says that there is nothing to worry about.
We see Bridget wearing a dress unzipped in the back and we can see her bra. She rummages through underwear options for an upcoming date. A teenager flirts with an older woman, and the woman is clearly interested. A man pinches a woman’s backside. Someone recites a suggestive poem. A widower is said to have been inundated with attention from women “of a certain age” after his wife’s passing. Mabel reads STD pamphlets in a doctor’s office and sounds out the various diseases. Someone talks about unfreezing her eggs and getting a sperm donation to have children.
We hear references to the female anatomy, contraception and sexual acts. Bridget says that one-night stands are the secret to “calmer, happier parenting.” Mabel says that Roxster gives her mother a “funny hairstyle in the morning.” Someone is referred to as a “boy toy,” and another person is worried about becoming “sexually obsolete.” Two men kiss. We hear a few songs that contain suggestive lyrics.
We learn that Mark was killed by a landmine while in Sudan. Mabel frets about dying when she gets stuck in a tree. Daniel has heart murmurs, which he mistook for a heart attack. Bridget trips and falls. A pan catches fire on a stovetop. A mother threatens to put her children in Squid Game.
We hear more than 40 f-words in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, including one that Bridget attempts to veil in the presence of her children. God’s name is abused more than 20 times, and there’s one misuse of Jesus’ name. There are seven s-words, along with “h—,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “a–” and “a–hole.” British profanities “b-llocking,” “tw-t” and “bloody” are used, as well as the term “shag.” We also hear crude slang references to male anatomy.
Bridget brings her children to a pub. Daniel shows children how to mix cocktails. Characters imbibe with wine and other drinks, whether on a date or at parties. Bridget’s friend Miranda tells her she should always have a bottle of champagne in the fridge “in case of emergencies.” Bridget takes an illegal lip serum which produces disastrous results. Someone is prescribed an antihistamine to help with an allergic reaction. Bridget worries about her children becoming “alcoholic wards of the state.” A mother calls her children “computer crackheads.”
Billy grapples with the concept of death and worries that in time, he won’t be able to remember his father. When Bridget returns to work, she says that she is back to “meaningfully contributing to society,” as if raising children was not accomplishing that goal. As she starts to date Roxster, she wonders whether he is closer in age to her or her son.
Billy ignores his mother’s request to get off his video game. Mabel throws a tantrum when she’s not allowed to watch a TV show. Frustrated, Bridget says she “doesn’t want to be a mummy right now.” A man asks if Bridget is going through menopause. Mabel innocently asks the adult men connected to Bridget if they will be her “new” father. Mabel pretends that the family cat is her husband. Daniel wants to improve Billy’s bluffing and cheating in cards. Someone is called a fascist.
As Paul Asay noted in his review for the last Bridget Jones movie, “the idea of sexual integrity before marriage is certainly not fashionable here—not in Bridget’s world, and not in Bridget’s life.” The same could be said of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.
Sure, Bridget’s at a different point in her life. She’s a widow and a single mother. But when the opportunity presents itself, she easily slips back into the lifestyle of casual sex before marriage which, one would hope, she had learned the folly of through her previous misadventures.
While this movie has some nice messages about grief, family and parenthood—particularly how our loved ones who have passed on never really leave us—those positive beats are undercut by a torrent of harsh language and near-constant sexual content, some of which is concerningly connected to minors.
Bridget’s father told her “to live.” But Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy seems to say that “living” can only be done when engaging in a promiscuous, self-serving lifestyle. Doing what you want, when you want. There’s little celebration of self-sacrifice here. And that, alongside its myriad content concerns, makes Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy a diary entry that isn’t worth reading.
Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.
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