Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) has joined the trend of long-awaited sequels with Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, and just like the previous movies in the series, it made some important changes to its source material. Almost a decade after the release of Bridget Jones’s Baby, the always charming and clumsy Bridget is back with her fourth movie – and though it’s also a rom-com, it’s emotionally heavier than its predecessors. Directed by Michael Morris, Mad About the Boy is based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Helen Fielding.

Mad About the Boy reunites with Bridget, now a mother of two kids – Billy and Mabel – and also a widow, as her husband, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), pᴀssed away four years ago. Encouraged by her friends, including none other than Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), Bridget decides it’s time to get herself together and start living again, and she ends up in the world of online dating. This leads Bridget to meet 29-year-old Roxster (Leo Woodall), with whom she begins a relationship. Meanwhile, Billy struggles with the loss of his father, while Bridget also deals with grief in her own way.

Parallel to her romance with Roxster, Bridget meets Billy’s science teacher, Mr. Walliker (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who always comes across her at embarrᴀssing times (for her, that is). Mr. Walliker ends up being a positive and necessary presence in Bridget’s life, especially for Billy, and she makes a wise decision about her love life at the end of Mad About the Boy. Although the Mad About the Boy movie is faithful to the book’s most important aspects, it also changed a few things.

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Bridget Jones Actually Meets Her New Neighbor In Mad About The Boy’s Book

Isla Fisher’s Character Has More Time In The Book’s Story

Bridget Jones is not in a good spot when viewers reunite with her at the beginning of Mad About the Boy. Bridget is still grieving Darcy, to the point where she imagines him in the room with her, and she has stopped working. Bridget also pretty much lives in her pajamas and continues to adapt to being a mom without Darcy. At one point in the first minutes of Mad About the Boy, Bridget, Billy, and Mabel witness their new neighbor, Rebecca (Isla Fisher), screaming at her kids and throwing their stuff out the window for them to catch them.

Mabel questions why they haven’t met the neighbors and Bridget tells her to “never meet your heroes” – except she did in the book, and it wasn’t bad. Bridget’s neighbor, Rebecca, does become a friend and ally to her, and she’s a kindred spirit to Bridget as they are both mothers struggling in their own ways. Unfortunately, in the movie, Rebecca is just an Isla Fisher cameo appearance.

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Bridget Jones Has A Different Job In Mad About The Boy’s Book

There’s No TV Producer Bridget In The Book

Bridget Jones was once a successful TV producer, but by the time of the events of Mad About the Boy, Bridget is no longer working. It’s unclear if she stopped working after having Billy or Mabel or if it was a result of her grief after Darcy’s death. Whatever the reason, while her friends and Daniel encourage her to date again and have Sєx, her friend and gynecologist, Doctor Rawlings (Emma Thompson), suggests to her that the best thing she can do is to return to work – and Bridget takes the advice of both sides.

After offering advice to her friend and TV host Miranda (Sarah Solemani) when she needs help with a live interview, Bridget calls her old colleague, Richard. Luckily for Bridget, she’s welcomed back and starts working as a producer again, and it’s clear that she loves and enjoys her job a lot. In the book, however, Bridget isn’t a TV producer. Instead, Bridget is a screenwriter, and through Mad About the Boy, she’s busy with a project that is exciting at first but gets wilder and wilder.

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Mad About The Boy’s Book Gives Bridget Jones A Specific Project At Work

Bridget Jones Goes Through Some Obstacles At Work

In the Mad About the Boy movie, Bridget simply returns as a TV producer in Miranda and Talitha’s (Josette Simon) show, but she’s not seen working on a specific project. In fact, the film adaptation of Mad About the Boy doesn’t pay much attention to Bridget at work aside from chatting with her friends about her love life and more. In the book, Bridget’s job has more space in the story, and readers follow her through the wild development of one of her best ideas.

What Bridget plans is to adapt Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler, considered a masterpiece within different literary genres. The play follows Hedda, the newly married daughter of a general who is bored and unhappy with her marriage and with life, in general. Bridget’s idea is to write a modern adaptation of Hedda Gabler, and though she gets an agent and a production company, her plans come across a big obstacle: the ridiculous demands from producers, who at one point even ask her to make the play into a rom-com.

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Mad About The Boy’s Book Sees Bridget Obsessing Over Her Weight (Again)

The Book Continues An Old Topic

The events of the entire Bridget Jones movie series are kicked off by Bridget deciding to turn her life around in Bridget Jones’s Diary, which happens after she hears Darcy making very rude comments about her. Bridget then begins writing her diary, in which she chronicles her attempts to stop smoking, stop drinking, lose weight, and find true love. Most of the Bridget Jones movies use her weight to either motivate her or insult her, and, unfortunately, this continues in the Mad About the Boy novel.

The film adaptation of Mad About the Boy doesn’t show Bridget’s struggle with her weight – instead, it focuses more on the topic of age, as Roxster is a lot younger than her. However, in the book, Bridget goes back to her old ways when starting her new diary, obsessively logging her weight, how much she drinks, and the nicotine gums she consumes. Body image and weight are a big topic in the Bridget Jones books and movies, but the film made a wise decision to move away from that.

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Bridget Jones Doesn’t Use Dating Apps In Mad About The Boy’s Book

Bridget Opts For A Different Social Media App

A lot has changed in the world of dating since Bridget Jones married Mark Darcy, so going back into it is a bit of a shock to her – more so as she goes back to it against her will. It’s Miranda who sets up a Tinder profile for Bridget, in which she makes sure to emphasize that she’s a widow and is ready for some action. It’s thanks to this that she connects with Roxster after their casual first meeting at the park, leading to their summer romance.

In the Mad About the Boy book, Bridget does use social media to go back into the dating pool, but she doesn’t sign up for any dating apps. When Mad About the Boy was published, the biggest social media platform was Twitter, and that’s exactly what Bridget starts using due to peer pressure. This leads to Bridget sharing her thoughts online as well as some drunk tweets, obsessing over her follower count, and asking others to follow her. It’s through Twitter that she connects with Roxster, which these days wouldn’t seem very believable.

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Mr. Walliker Literally Saves Billy’s Life In Mad About The Boy’s Book

Mr. Walliker Is A True Hero

In the Mad About the Boy movie adaptation, Mr. Walliker is all about discipline, and not just with students, but with their parents, too. This only makes him showing up at Bridget’s most embarrᴀssing moments even funnier, as he’s the complete opposite and he comes off as not exactly the warmest person. However, as Bridget and the audience gradually learn, Mr. Walliker is actually very compᴀssionate and kind, and he does have a warm heart, after all.

A key moment in Mad About the Boy is Mr. Walliker helping Bily with his grief over his father’s death, and he does so by helping him prepare a musical number at the school’s show. In the book, Mr. Walliker’s key moment with Billy is different, as he literally saves his life. When a parent loses control of their car at a school event, Mr. Walliker saves Billy from a potentially fatal situation, showing a different and heroic side of him that Bridget didn’t know he had.

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Daniel Cleaver’s Health Scare Is Different In Mad About The Boy’s Book

In The Movie, Daniel Really Needed The Health Scare

A big surprise in the Mad About the Boy movie, and not a sad one, is Daniel Cleaver’s role as an ally and friend of Bridget rather than a love interest. Daniel even babysits Billy and Mabel, and he keeps Bridget in his heart, though he still flirts with her at any given chance. At one point in Mad About the Boy, Daniel has a health scare due to his heart, even telling Bridget that he has been informed he might not have much time to live.

This leads Daniel to re-evaluate his life and where he has failed, such as in building a relationship with his teenage son. In the book, Daniel’s health scare is due to his alcohol problem, which sends him to the hospital when he mistakes a bottle of liquid soap for liqueur. Daniel doesn’t have the big realization about his life, family, and legacy that he has in the movie, but it makes his friends realize that they should check on him more often.

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Mad About The Boy’s Book Goes Deeper Into Bridget & Roxster’s Relationship

There’s A Lot More Roxster In The Book

Bridget’s big romance in Mad About the Boy is thanks to Roxster, who, in the movie, is very direct to Bridget about his attraction to older women. Bridget doesn’t have a problem with that and lets herself go with him, with their first date developing into a relationship. The Mad About the Boy movie adaptation shows Bridget and Roxster’s summer romance and cute dates, while also showing how, while Mabel is accepting of Roxster, Billy isn’t thrilled about his presence. After Talitha’s birthday party, where a drunk Roxter tells Bridget he wishes he had a time machine, he ghosts her.

Roxster returns some time later, but it’s clear to Bridget that, despite what he says and what she feels about him, they can’t be together. That’s the end of Roxster’s time in the Mad About the Boy movie, but in the book, he has a bigger presence. Unsurprisingly, the Mad About the Boy novel goes a lot deeper into Roxster and Bridget’s relationship, showing Bridget’s fears and worries about it (both serious and not-so-serious, like worrying about his texting patterns), as well as how the relationship develops.