Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, starring Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Leo Woodall, is released on Valentine’s Day but journalist Jess Flaherty will not be watching it
The new Bridget Jones film comes out on Valentine’s Day and while I’m a big fan of the character, this is one film in the series I will be swerving.
Renee Zellweger is set to return in the eponymous role which bagged her an Oscar nomination when she donned Bridget’s big knickers for the first time back in 2001. As with previous instalments, the new film charts Bridget’s hilarious attempts at securing love – wait, what? Haven’t we seen this one before? In fact, wasn’t she happily loved up with Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy?
No, gentle reader, this time around, we’ve got a widowed Bridget Jones holding down a great job as a screenplay writer, managing her family and young children, and the arrival of a new boyfriend – who just so happens to be 20 years her junior.
The boyfriend in question is played by talented White Lotus and One Day star Leo Woodall, and I think it’s safe to assume he’s the “boy” our beloved Bridget is mad about.
Only, I don’t want to watch an age-gap relationship glorified and glamorised by one of my favourite characters. Sure, Hollywood is no stranger to inappropriate age gaps being portrayed on the silver screen, but there does seem to be a real rise in stories portraying more mature women going for younger men, as opposed to the tired alternative.
Is this pushback from years of watching older male actors opposite young, fresh faced ingenues? Or is it just an odd trend we’re stuck with for the foreseeable future?
We’ve already had Anne Hathaway in Amazon Prime’s The Idea of You, then Nicole Kidman opposite Zac Efron in A Family Affair. Kidman was brilliant in Babygirl, which portrays yet another inappropriate age gap relationship alongside the blurred lines exploration of kink, consent and hidden desires. At least with Babygirl, it doesn’t shy away from the unavoidable and uncomfortable questions associated with age gaps and their inherent power dynamics.
Of course, consenting adults are free to do as they please but I can’t help but feel ‘The Ick’ at yet more age-gap relationships being thrust upon audiences. There’s a wild, unrelatable difference in life experience between a person in their 20s and a person in their 50s and I don’t understand how I’m supposed to root for them to get together.
Similarly, I’m absolutely gutted Mark Darcy has been killed off. I don’t understand why creatives make us root for a couple just to kill one of them for the sake of another chapter in the story. If the first book and film had ended with Mark’s untimely death, then fair enough, but this feels as though it’s just a desperate ploy to get more money out of the Bridget Jones machine.
Why couldn’t we have had an entirely new, mature heroine battling life as a newly single mother in the wake of her husband’s death? Preferably without an age gap, too. We could’ve been introduced to a fresh, exciting new portrayal of a story we don’t often see – and Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy could’ve had their happily ever after off screen.
