Parents' Guide to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Doing an impressive job of merging the old with the new, this fourth installment of the franchise has enough callbacks for die-hard fans while still keeping the story, and the heroine, moving forward. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy presents a rare achievement for a sequel, bringing the franchise firmly back to its roots, while also modernizing it just enough. The original suitors are incorporated, perhaps in surprising ways, yet two new love interests are introduced—both in keeping with the Mark Darcy/Daniel Cleaver dynamic, but maintaining a little more power in Bridget's court. Our heroine, in the meantime, is still as lovably befuddled, but the chain-smoking and preoccupation with weight are gone, and she's clearly on a journey to trust her own instincts and give the opinions of others the (frequent) "F words" they deserve. She still sings and dances around the house, but a separate dance scene shows just how much more confident she is in her own skin this time around. Meanwhile, her friend group is reassuringly as loving but dysfunctional as they were nearly 25 years ago in the first film. If anything, audiences will root even more for Bridget than they have before—there are certainly enough tearjerker moments to remind us that she's worth investing in, even as we laugh at the same cringe-worthy moments that have made her a national, and international, treasure.