The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I don’t often write about movies because my fifteen minutes of being the target audience has lapsed. I eschewed the whole ‘having kids’ thing and so am bored/disinterested in animation and repulsed by  anything with the word Disney in front of it (read Intern Nation if you want a reality check on that company). I’m not an 18-24 year old male (last time I checked) so violent, comic book hero movies with vapid bordering-on-slutty females and things exploding ad nauseam don’t work for me either. I’m left with chick flicks and foreign films and sadly I’ve grown too lazy and near-sighted for subtitles. Chick flicks can be all right but when the plot is centered around making a man love you, getting a man to marry you, getting back a man who loved you…well, really, isn’t there more to being a woman then a man?

What a lovely surprise then to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel where a disparate cast of senior citizens decides to chuck it all and head to a hotel in Jaipur, India that promises to cater to them. Of course, nothing is as advertised or planned and the next 100 minutes follow the characters and how they deal with this ‘adventure’.  

There are many instances when an all-star ensemble cast can’t carry a movie (New Years Eve, anyone?) but this is not the case in Marigold Hotel. Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and the incomparable Maggie Smith all shine. Add to that the loose-limbed bemusement of Bill Nighy and this is a group that will captivate from beginning to end. The final well chosen ingredient in Marigold Hotel is the location. There are few places in the world that can delight and dismay, welcome and hide like India. The cacophony of sound and color and the exuberance of Indian hotelier, Dev Patel (from Slumdog Millionaire), is a perfect foil to the natural reserve of the Brits.

If you are a particularly jaded film devotee you may leave Marigold Hotel thinking it was predictable. My response? Tell me a movie that isn’t (and don’t say Memento because that was crazy genius). Even in life, there is an element of predictability, so let go and enjoy this charming, funny, tender movie.