Spoilers ahead for Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy.
Praise the rom-com overlords, Bridget Jones is back for one final chaotic chapter.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is a moving adaptation of Helen Fielding’s final novel of the same name, which sees Bridget (Renée Zellweger) coping with the untimely death of her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Four years a widow, she embarks on a new relationship with a younger man, 29-year-old Roxster (One Day and The White Lotus star Leo Woodall), putting her on a new path as she navigates being a widow and single mother.
After meeting Roxster — while stuck halfway up a tree on London’s Hampstead Heath — Bridget approaches her dating life with more of a confident, liberated attitude than in previous films. While giving us full circle moments to the original Bridget Jones’s Diary and its sequels, Mad About the Boy flips certain iconic moments on their head, with Bridget recognising modern shifts in cultural conversations around sex, dating, and relationships. For one, it’s deeply refreshing to see how Bridget Jones functions in a relationship featuring an age gap — he’s 29, she’s in her 50s.
Unfortunately, Mad About the Boy fumbles this representation, primarily in a rather regrettable key scene. Having built an entire film around Bridget Jones finding liberation while dating someone younger, Mad About the Boy makes the maddening decision to then have her apologise for it.
It’s been nine years since the last sequel, Bridget Jones’s Baby, 24 years since the original movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary dropped in cinemas, and 30 years since author Helen Fielding penned her first Bridget Jones column for The Independent. And yet, watching Bridget and Roxster’s relationship in the Michael Morris-directed Mad About the Boy, we must question whether the characters and storylines have moved on at all when it comes to looking at age-gap relationships through a nuanced, progressive lens.
Bridget’s age-gap relationship is coloured with an unnecessary shame
Credit: Jay Maidment / Universal Pictures
The real problem with Mad About the Boy‘s portrayal of Bridget’s age-gap relationship begins when it ends. After months of bliss and sex, Roxster abruptly ghosts Bridget. Eventually, he’ll reappear, but she rebuffs his efforts to reconcile, deciding their different ages create too much distance between them. After all, he’s navigating what he wants out of life, particularly his responsibilities, whereas she has many already, her children in particular. There’s a gulf between them when it comes to emotional maturity. So far, so understandable. But then the shame sets in, and the film reaches a disappointing moment for the protagonist.
When Bridget converses with her late husband Mark in her grief, she’s understandably falling apart at the seams. But then she tearfully apologises for her “toy boy” dalliance. Sure, this moment is wrapped in the kind of guilt that accompanies grief, but it feels disappointing that Bridget isn’t allowed to acknowledge her own sense of enrichment here. Instead, the last we see of Bridget reflecting on her romance with Roxster is during a late-night personal shamefest.
Credit: Jay Maidment / Universal Pictures
Bridget Jones is an undeniably iconic character when it comes to women’s empowerment, especially in sex, dating, and relationships, even in the face of the mistakes and progressive critiques we might now make of her. Over the years we have come to terms with the normalised sexual harassment and fat-shaming present in the books and movies, from bum-patting in the work lifts and Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver clearly abusing his power as Bridget’s boss. And don’t get us started on the constant obsessing over Bridget’s weight.
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So as the franchise moves into the 2020s, wouldn’t it have been amazing to see Bridget feel liberated despite age-gap relationship not working out, instead of apologising for it? Wouldn’t we have rejoiced if we’d seen her reflect on how her relationship with Roxster made her feel, instead of ending the storyline with stigma and shame? Grief and guilt over moving on is important to convey, sure, but it felt like the relationship between Bridget and Roxster was packed away as a mistake, not a compelling learning curve.
Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”.
Credit: Jay Maidment / Universal Pictures
Sadly, this isn’t the only frustrating example of age-gap relationship stigmatisation in the new Bridget Jones movie. Grant’s return as the devilish Daniel is handled well, with his inappropriate behaviour dialled way back and more warmth and humour than ever before. However, beyond his role as Bridget’s close friend and confidante, Daniel is portrayed as a tragic figure himself, a role explained as the result of his continued penchant for dating younger women — something that Bridget scoffs at, ironically. Despite publicly praising his younger girlfriend, he confides in Bridget about the lack of intimacy in his life, how lonely he feels. Why couldn’t Daniel’s relationships – whether with a younger partner or not – have also found a path of some form of contentment, instead of more shame?
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renée Zellweger in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”
Credit: Jay Maidment / Universal Pictures
The social script that dating someone younger is frivolous and ultimately leads to the older partner feeling ashamed of themselves runs through the movie, leading to Bridget’s ultimate ending being a romantic connection with teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). That Bridget has to ‘end up’ in a relationship at all feels like a missed opportunity for rom-com disruption here, but the film seems to be explicitly championing our protagonist dating someone older than Roxster. Mr Wallaker’s character is likeable, sure, but it’s hard not to eye-roll when the film decides the only way Bridget might find her happy ending is through a conventional relationship with a man her age — and that any other “dalliance” is something to be ashamed of.
Mad About the Boy had plenty of age-gap references to draw from
Credit: Jay Maidment / Universal Pictures
Mad About The Boy’s lack of nuance and compassion towards a woman’s experimentation with an age-gap relationship is made all the more conspicuous by the fact that the theme has recently been dealt with in a much less problematic fashion across multiple movies. The Idea Of You, starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine, saw a 40-something divorcée have a steamy, adorable affair with a boy band star — with the social stigma acknowledged and explored — while Netflix’s A Family Affair used comedy to explore a relationship between characters of different ages played by Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron. The most sophisticated recent portrayal of an age-gap relationship, though, is Halina Reijn’s Babygirl.
It’s hard not to compare Bridget’s age-gap relationship with Babygirl, which has generated its own conversations around women dating younger men. It may be marketed as a salacious, sexually-charged age-gap relationship between Nicole Kidman’s Romy and Harris Dickinson’s Samuel, but it’s an exercise in dismantling shame and validating desire. Through their relationship, we see Romy explore and celebrate her own sexual boundaries and their age-gap relationship as a vehicle of sexual and emotional empowerment. This kind of finesse would’ve been revolutionary in Mad About the Boy if used to portray Bridget Jones’ relationship with Roxster and the impact dating someone younger had on her sexual identity. Their dalliance didn’t need to last for life or completely define her – we know that the majority of relationships don’t – but the way in which it ended and the way Bridget navigated her feelings of rejection and grief could have honoured the lessons she learned from the relationship. Mad About the Boy comes close to doing so, but – ultimately – no dice.
Destigmatising age-gap relationships on screen is integral to female empowerment
Credit: Jay Maidment / Universal Pictures
Sexologist and relationship therapist Madalaine Munro explains to Mashable that the way in which these age-gap relationship storylines are portrayed onscreen work to either strengthen or dismantle outdated stereotypes around female sexuality.
Munro adds that when done effectively, these representations can challenge “the pervasive fear that aging leads to irrelevance in romantic and sexual relationships” as well as reinforcing the idea that “it’s never too late for self-discovery, deep connection, and fulfilling relationships.”Important relationship elements such as emotional intelligence, communication and mutual respect are foundational, regardless of age or gender,” she says.
“These storylines matter because they disrupt limiting perceptions about women’s sexuality, particularly in later life,” Munro explains. “When Hollywood handles these themes effectively, it helps shift cultural perceptions, offering audiences more expansive representations of love, sex and relationships beyond traditional norms.
“However, when mishandled, such stories risk reinforcing harmful tropes, either fetishising or shaming older women’s desires rather than celebrating them as natural and valid.”
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy explores self-discovery through age-gap relationships but falls into a rather traditional trope of shaming a woman for her desires, and failing to view a non-conventional relationship as valuable in its own way. While we enjoyed seeing Bridget letting her freak flag fly, perhaps future rom-com heroines should be given the space to feel actually empowered by this experience, bringing less shame and stigma to these relationships, on and off screen.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is out now in cinemas and streaming on Peacock.
