The new addition to the Bridget Jones series has been released on Valentine’s Day. The original series was quite popular with four very famous movies made after the popular book by Helen Fielding. The film series is about the confusing, exotic love life of the character, Bridget Jones. The film starts out with Bridget Jones as her usual, jumbled self, but now she has two kids, one of which is William who was introduced in the film, Bridget Jones’ Baby. Renee Zellweger, who plays Bridget Jones, was clearly in a rush, to the point where she almost lights her house on fire by making her children dinner, and then was greeted by the caregiver for the night, Daniel Cleaver, role reprised by Hugh Grant. Cleaver was her former partner, and now close friend. When Jones finally arrives at her event, she dreams her husband is by her side, Mark Darcy, a original character, it is then revealed that he has passed away.
After being pressured by many close friends and even her doctor, Bridget Jones begins to start her life again and get it together. The entire film is about Bridget attempting to get herself back into the dating world, to which she ends up dating a younger man (29 years old), Roxster, who is played by Leo Woodall. Bridget Jones finally starts to get her life together, she hires a nanny, gets her job back as a producer, and she has a boyfriend, but then Roxster begins to ghost her. He ends up coming back to her, but she rejects him. It was a really interesting storyline about Bridget Jones’s family recovering after such a loss. I felt the way that the children were portrayed, especially Billy, was impeccable. I loved how they shine a light on the children’s loss and their feelings and how it wasn’t ignored. After the whole storyline of Roxster, Bridget Jones starts to settle down and notices her son’s teacher, and she ends up falling in love with him.
There are plenty of movies that do a good job in creating sequels, or in this case many sequels, but I felt that this sequel was truly not necessary. I am a really big fan of the series, but I felt that this one was too modernized, it did not have the same engaging feeling that the others did. There were many choices where I do not think I would have written them that way, but the writers made it work out for the most part. The first part being; I despised the way that the writers put Bridget Jones with someone who was so significantly younger, I don’t feel like her character would be the type to go for someone much younger, yet they tried so hard for this storyline to last. Recently, many women in film have been put into the role of having a significant other who is so much younger than the woman, and I just don’t feel that it is completely fitting, especially for this film. Another thing that I was not a fan of was that they killed off Colin Firth’s character, Mark Darcy, because I felt that in the last film, the two had just gotten together, and they were happy together, but viewers didn’t really get to see this relationship play out, and they won’t be able to because he passed away. I do however like how they did bring back many of the old cast, like Emma Thompson, as Bridget Jones’s doctor, and Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, and of course Renee Zellweger. I liked how they played into the friendship line of Daniel Cleaver and Bridget Jones, but I do wish they could have brought the two back together possibly. It felt that they were written to be back together, but the writers didn’t take that chance. Instead they went for her son’s teacher, which I felt was right in the end.
Overall, I would not recommend this movie. Coming from a rom-com fan, I would say that it is better to watch the original films over this, I felt that it was a waste of two hours, and was not necessarily funny or heartfelt. The whole film felt cheap and rushed, I was not a fan.
