The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

OAP's abroad...Judi Dench...Celia Imrie..The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Following the format, of older people going to India, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel doesn't live up to it's expectations. It follows a bunch of pensioners, carrying on the usual stereotypes, as they travel to Jaipur, after being enticed by an advert for the hotel on "the interweb." Maggie Smith plays a Cockney racist, a nice steer-away from the Downton Abbey Duchess, Judi Dench is the melancholic widow. Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton play a very incompatible couple, while Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie chip in as the pair looking for love. Then there's Tom Wilkinson, who harbours a secret that he has never let out - until this film of course. They arrive in India to discover that the hotel is dilapidated, and the advert was Photoshopped by fast-talking Sonny (Dev Patel), who owns the hotel, trying to make it a success to show his mother how successful he can be. Judi Dench's character Evelyn manages to get an unconvincing job in Jaipur advising a call centre on how to talk to Brits. Bill Nighy wanders off a lot and you don't really not what happens. Tom Wilkinson's story is the only watchable one, it's basically him revisiting childhood memories with consequences that I would say, but then it'd spoil the film. Some parts are enjoyable but it doesn't really live up to what I expected.




3/5