Oh my, how time flies. Nine years have passed since our last dip into the ongoing diary of Bridget Jones. Said film saw the beloved Brit – invention of Helen Fielding, masterpiece of Renée Zellweger – give birth to a son of two potential fathers. That neither remain a feature of Bridget’s life, despite co-parenting promise, speaks something to the inconsequentiality of film three. The same cannot be said of four, an altogether more consequential – dare we say weighty? – entry. Mad About the Boy pairs Bridget’s jolly brand of japery with a greater ear for sentiment and the nuances of time. Certainly, it mediates rather nicely on what it means to navigate the world as a woman of a certain age…whatever that means in the twenty-first century.
It’s amazing just how involving The Lion King is on stage. The lack of actual, or, indeed, believable, lions on stage matters less in this context than the ability of the actors to speak to the emotional truth of the characters they are playing. Through the abstracted masks and feathers, the circle of life lives. There’s a joke on this matter in the latter half of Mufasa, Disney’s financially viable follow up to Jon Favreau’s 2019 photoreal remake of the original 1994 Lion King. A Billy Eichner voiced Timon snarks his distaste for the show on the basis of his part being played by a sock puppet. That’s the joke. To this there is only one response. Mufasa’s Timon may look exactly the part of the meerkat he is but he hasn’t half the warmth, humour and soul of the sock.
It’s been two decades since Love Actually rewrote the Christmas movie playbook, predominantly by exhausting it. If you’ve ever wondered what an infantilisation of the interconnectivity conceit would look like, Netflix’s That Christmas has the answer. The film is Richard Curtis’ second festive offering in as many years, following 2023’s Genie, and, well, it’s fine. Colourful, innocuous, mildly diverting…pick your bland adjective and damn with faint praise at leisure.
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