Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy gets mixed first reviews from critics

Bridget Jones is back and the critics have had their say on her latest misadventures in Mad About the Boy, the fourth film in the franchise which comes more than twenty years after the first film.

In the new film, Bridget (Renée Zellweger) has been a widow for four years, her darling husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) having died during a mission in Sudan. Now a single mother of two, Bridget is more concerned about raising them than finding love but with a bit of encouragement she gets back out onto the dating scene and finds not one but two suitors: Roxster (Leo Woodall) and teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

The movie is inspired by author Helen Fielding's own experience with grief after her husband died, and it follows Bridget as she tries to navigate that with the prospect of finding love again, returning to work, and also helping her children through this difficult time. Critics gave their thoughts on the film ahead of its release, and they were almost divided down the middle with their sentiment on it.

The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey called Mad About the Boy the "best sequel yet" and argued that the film's director Michael Morris was able to handle "Bridget’s combative love life with far more care and subtlety than first sequel The Edge of Reason ever did".

Loughrey commended Zellweger on her performance, saying she "wears the role like a second skin [and] never overplays a scene" in a way that explains exactly why the character of Bridget is so timeless.

"Bridget is a woman of the people, after all, because she represents how we use performative cheeriness as a defence mechanism. Wine and power ballads take care of the rest," the critic wrote. "When it comes to Mad About the Boy, it’s less that Bridget Jones has finally matured, and more that she’s shown us how human she really is."

The Telegraph's Robbie Collin was even more effusive in his praise, saying that the newest film is actually the best of the entire franchise.

He wrote: "What was hilariously recognisable in 2001 was a tad stale in 2004, and downright obsolete in 2016. But this terrifically funny and well-judged part four – by some distance the best of the bunch – makes a virtue of the cultural shift."

Collin added that the film is brought to life "as deftly as anything in peak Richard Curtis" and that there's a lot to enjoy within its heart-warming narrative: "Yes, there are corny bits, but what sort of Bridget Jones film would it be if there weren’t? Like Bridget’s own love life, the London-set romantic comedy has been in hibernation for a decade-plus. What an unexpected joy to see both revived in such style."

Watch the trailer for Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy

Meanwhile, Deadline's Pete Hammond wrote that the film was a "total delight", adding: "This edition relies more heavily on sentimentality than previous films, and the Love Actually touch, though laid on rather thick in the second half will give the fans what they want: laughter and tears, plus a rooting interest in Bridget’s ultimate happiness."

But not every critic loved the film, for Variety's Owen Gleiberman the film was little more than a "mild finale" that felt perfectly suited for streaming —it is going straight to Peacock in the US rather than getting a theatrical release. The critic said: "I wish Mad About the Boy took more aggressive fun in plugging Bridget into the fads and tropes of the present day. The movie, by design, has a sentimental middle-aged softness to it."

He went on: "Mad About the Boy is wistful, melancholy, and sweetly (rather than screwballishly) romantic, which lends it a pleasing sincerity. It feels very much like it’s the finale of the series, and if that proves to be the case it brings this beloved heroine to a fitting place of closure."

For The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw the film proved that the franchise had "frankly run out of steam" and that he didn't enjoy himself despite "willing" himself to do so.

"The jokes have been dialled down to accommodate a contrived and unconvincingly mature 'weepie' component but the film becomes sad in the wrong way," Bradshaw wrote. "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."

The Standard's Nick Curtis was even more blunt with his criticisms of the film, describing it as "a bloated, weeping sogfest that blunders laboriously through the established tropes of the series."

Curtis added: "Bridget Jones’s Diary started out as a mid-90s newspaper-column spoof of Pride and Prejudice and while no one would begrudge Fielding the success of the subsequent books and films, they’ve steadily decreased in sophistication and wit. Retirement now surely beckons for Bridget."

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy premieres in UK cinemas on Thursday, 13 February.