Bridget Jones is back—and thank God, because can I tell you what I haven’t heard in a while? A long, meandering pub monologue about how no one could really afford to live alone in a two-story flat in Borough Market, especially on a publishing salary, not even in the 2000s. Now my slightly warm pinot grigios can once again be soundtracked by friends of friends I didn’t know were experts in the central London property market circa 2001, telling me in great depth about how unrealistic a fictional character’s life is. What? I had no idea?
Confirmed last week, film four—Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy—is expected to be loosely based on Helen Fielding’s novel of the same name. Once again starring Renée Zellweger in the titular diary-writing, cigarette-huffing role, it’ll follow Jones in her 50s as she has a bloody nightmare with online dating, social media, and complicated TV remotes. Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver will be back! Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy is dead! (A concept many fans are struggling with, but unfortunately death does come for us all, even posh, socially awkward lawyers.) And Bridget will have a much younger boyfriend played by Leo Woodall, star of One Day, sporter of delightfully floppy bangs and, let’s just say what everyone’s thinking here, Hugh Grant 2.0. (Is this movie the passing of the mantle from one sexy British heartthrob to his successor? Perhaps, but I personally feel like Hugh’s really come into his own in the Paddington franchise, so maybe he’s still got a few good years left in him.)
Anyway, back on topic! To me, the return of BJ is tremendous news, which is not something I’d have written if I hadn’t happened to watch Bridget Jones, the original, on a flight with very limited entertainment options recently. Before those 97 minutes, immersed in Y2K London with just a watery orange juice and tiny bag of Penn State Sour Cream Chive for company, I remembered the film basically as an extended ad for diet culture: an hour and a half of filmmakers pointing at Zellweger, screaming things like, “Look! This previously very slim woman ate 20 donuts a day to get big enough to play a woman whose main characteristic is her humongous size, despite weighing less than the average British woman!” or, “Wow, you’re in your 30s? Shouldn’t you be at home sucking on Werther’s Originals?”
I’d kind of forgotten it had a plot. (In case you need a refresher: 32-year-old “singleton” Bridget is getting hounded by her family to stop spending so much time drinking vodka with her arguably dysfunctional, inarguably hilarious friends and start settling down; she falls into a situationship with her horny, somewhat predatory boss, Daniel, but also develops feelings for family friend and good-guy lawyer Mark; and while all of this is happening, she’s writing a diary that’s quite heavily focused on her weight, how many cigarettes she’s smoked, and her latest embarrassing mishaps at work.) I hadn’t remembered that it was genuinely funny and actually has a lot to say about the absolute nonsense that comes with being a woman. In my head, it only really existed in the form of one of those deeply earnest listicles about its most problematic moments. Now that I’ve rewatched it, though? I’d argue that the film has been unfairly maligned by many of us as an irredeemable relic of the aughts, lumped into the same Avoid Watching at All Costs category as Love Actually (genuinely terrible) when it actually deserves a spot alongside Sex and the City in the Definitely Contains Dubious Moments but Is Also Entertaining and Relatable Enough to Make It Worth Your Time bracket.
I should flag here that I’m absolutely not saying the film doesn’t have major problems. (Could anything have been molded into form in the hell-like aughts without it being, in some way… a bit weird? I’ve certainly spent a lot of money on therapy for that very reason.) There are some lighthearted references to sexual harassment in there; Bridget and Daniel’s relationship is, er, inappropriate to say the least; and, as someone who has never weighed less than Bridget for as long as I’ve been weighing myself, the character’s detailed analysis of every pound she gains or loses gave me, like many other women, a yardstick to beat myself up with for decades.
But the general consensus that Bridget, in and of herself, is problematic is, I’d argue, misguided—even if she does binge drink and obsess about her age and display staggering naivety when faced with sex pests. In fact, I think it’s refreshing to see a rom-com led by a genuinely funny, clumsy, chaotic (and not in a mean, Fleabag way) character; one who loves shagging (and not as a trauma response) and whom men fall in love with because she’s silly and not because she’s impressive or beautiful or incredibly kind.
Now, I might be biased here for I, myself, am a deeply silly, clumsy, and unserious woman. I’m a Mr. Bean person, someone whose life is a string of calamitous incidents tied together by my telling funny stories about them. I’ve been known to, I don’t know, fall off my office chair because my dress is too slippy or knock all the Pilates balls off a wall mid-class, panicking as fitness girlies tumble around me like bowling pins. I like partying as much as I did in my 20s. I have a history of situationships with some of the very worst people in the world. I recently started writing a diary (although I’m referring to it as “journalling,” this being 2024) and it’s full of mundane ramblings about shallow neuroses (my one wrinkle features heavily). And—oh, God, this feels lame to write—but, of course, like many women, I have self-esteem issues and don’t feel good enough, I worry that I’m too old or too ugly or too stupid or too fat or too likely to slip off an office chair to survive happily in the world, that my boyfriend might turn around one day and tell me he’s breaking up with me because I have mediocre eyebrows and sometimes I’m a bit grumpy. And I know all of this is untrue and laced with problematic belief systems and internalized fatphobia and sexism and ageism, and that these days we’re supposed to go around practicing self-love and being our authentic selves, but existing in our society often means rationally telling ourselves one thing is true (e.g. I’m lovable and have good eyebrows) while still being haunted by the feeling that we could just be kidding ourselves.
That’s what the movie made me think about when I watched it this time around. I saw it more as an imperfect exploration of what it means to never feel good enough, rather than a dictation on what body size is acceptable and whether or not it’s OK to be single over the age of 30. I imagine those feelings were particularly hard to shake if you were a woman in the ’90s and aughts—and, in many ways, I think Bridget Jones is best enjoyed as a period piece exploring that era. (Although, obviously, it did go on to contribute to those problems.) But it wasn’t just the aughts, was it? That famous Barbie monologue about all the pressures women face these days wouldn’t have gone so viral if it was. In fact, I’d imagine that in this era of Ozempic, fasting, extensive 5 a.m.-to-9 a.m. wellbeing routines, literal children using anti-aging serums, cleaning influencers, Botox and fillers and dating apps with age filters, many of us have equally complicated feelings about what we’re supposed to look like and what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives. Bridget’s anxiety still feels relatable now. It’s just that our generation’s better at hiding it.