Bridget Jones’s Baby has a problem. The film wants to be two things at once, and neither one lands. It wants to be a mature comedy about a woman in her forties carrying a baby she’s not sure whose it is, and it wants to be a continuation of a franchise that hasn’t made sense for years. It can’t decide which version of Bridget it’s telling jokes about, and the result is a movie that spends its runtime asking us to forgive its own laziness.
The premise is simple. Bridget Jones, played again by Renée Zellweger, is forty-three and single after a breakup. She’s a television producer with a job and friends, and she’s trying to live a controlled life. Then she meets Jack, a handsome man she encounters at a music festival, and they have a one-night stand. A week later she runs into Mark, her ex from the last movie, and finds out she’s pregnant. The twist is that she can’t tell which of them is the father.
Sharon Maguire directs from a screenplay by Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, and Emma Thompson, based on a story by Fielding. It’s the third film in the Bridget Jones series, and it marks Zellweger’s return to the screen after a six-year hiatus.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Mark and Jack Both Have to Be the Same Guy
The film’s central joke is that Bridget is in love with two men who are essentially the same person. Mark is a lawyer, a member of the House of Lords, and a man of property. Jack is a mathematician and the billionaire founder of a dating website. He’s also a handsome man who is capable of being a father. On paper, they are opposites. In the film, they are interchangeable.
The script doesn’t treat this as a problem. It treats it as a running gag. Bridget can’t decide between them, and the movie keeps showing us scenes where each man would be exactly the same father. It’s a strange choice for a comedy about identity, where the whole point should be the tension between who these two men are.
Bridget’s Forties Are a Problem
The film is set in the present day, and Bridget is in her forties. That means she’s not a young woman having an unplanned pregnancy. She’s a woman who has spent her thirties writing books and being funny, and now she gets to be the one who has to figure out what to do with her life.
The film doesn’t want to deal with that. It wants to make Bridget a funny mess, but it keeps circling back to the idea that she’s a grown woman who can’t make a decision. There’s a difference between being a woman who is funny and a woman who is a mess, and this film doesn’t always know which one it’s writing.
The supporting cast is strong. Colin Firth returns as Mark, and Patrick Dempsey returns as Jack. Jim Broadbent plays Bridget’s father, Gemma Jones plays her mother, and Emma Thompson plays Dr. Rawlings. Sally Phillips plays Miranda, Bridget’s co-worker and friend, and Shirley Henderson plays Jude, Bridget’s friend whose baby is being christened.
The Music Festival Scene
The film’s best scene is also its most straightforward. Bridget goes to a music festival with her friend Miranda, and she meets Jack. They spend the evening together, and in the morning she wakes alone and leaves. That’s it. The scene works because it’s about two people meeting and not knowing what happens next.
The rest of the movie keeps circling back to that moment, asking us to believe that Bridget has made a choice about two men she barely knows. The film is at its weakest when it tries to make that choice feel important. It’s at its best when it lets the moment breathe.
The Christening and the Note
Bridget attends her friend Jude’s baby’s christening as godmother. Mark is asked to be the godfather at the last minute. He tells Bridget that he and Camilla are divorcing, and that Camilla was only at the memorial for moral support. Realising they are still in love, Bridget and Mark spend the night together. She leaves before he wakes up, leaving a note telling him she fears reconnecting would only repeat their past mistakes.
That note is the film’s key moment. Bridget is trying to protect Mark from herself. She’s not trying to protect herself from Mark. The film keeps circling back to that difference, and it keeps asking us to forgive Bridget for being a woman who can’t make a decision.
The Numbers Behind the Film
The film premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 5 September 2016 and was released in the United Kingdom and the United States on 16 September. It grossed over $211 million worldwide against a production budget of $35 million. It was nominated for a European Film Academy Lux Award and a Globe de Cristal Award for Best Foreign Film.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 5 September 2016 | Premiere at Odeon Leicester Square, London |
| 16 September | Release in the United Kingdom and the United States |
| 2025 | Sequel Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy released |
| $35 million | Production budget |
| $211 million | Worldwide gross |
What the Film Gets Right
The film has a few moments that work. The music festival scene, with Bridget and Jack meeting and parting in the morning, is sharp and funny. The note where Bridget leaves without waking Mark is a genuine moment of feeling. The film’s cast is consistently good, and Zellweger is at her best when the film trusts her to be funny without being a mess.
What the Film Gets Wrong
The film gets lost in its own joke. It spends too much time asking us to believe that Bridget can’t decide between two men who are essentially the same person. It keeps circling back to the idea that she’s a woman who can’t make a decision, and it never lets her be a woman who is funny.
The film’s problem is that it doesn’t trust its own premise. It’s a story about a woman in her forties carrying a baby she’s not sure whose it is, and it treats that premise as a joke. It’s not a joke. It’s a premise, and the film never knows what to do with it.
The film is a mixed bag. It has moments that are sharp and funny, and it has moments that are lazy and repetitive. It’s a film about a woman in her forties carrying a baby she’s not sure whose it is, and it keeps asking us to forgive its own laziness.
The film is a 5.9 out of 10.
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