Movie – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Movie

The answer by one of the characters to the question – ‘What do you see in this country?’ sums up the movie:

‘Light, colours, smiles, all life is here!’ And I will add to it loads of laughter. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is funny, witty, full of dry humour and is inspiring

Seven British actors Judy Dench, Maggie, Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson, and Ronald Pickup, all with much film, theatre, and television experience, team up with the young Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) mesh well to give a brilliant performance.

Outsourcing at its best. All seven, retired and retiring men and women, who for various reasons can’t afford or don’t want to go into ‘homes’ and who have never been to India (except for one) make up their minds with great leap of faith to retire affordably at the this palace hotel in Udaipur, in Rajasthan, India. Besides the culture shock that awaits them the best exotic Marigold Hotel is a run down, dirty, dusty establishment that the young Sonny is trying to put together. Nothing like the much ‘photo-shopped’ brochures and TV ads portray. These seven are Sonny’s first paying guests.

What follows is a hilariously funny story.

Evelyn (Judy Dench) is stable and is open to new experiences. Financially depleted she even manages to get a job to work with young people at a telephone outsourcing company when she get to India.

Muriel (Maggie Smith) is very ‘English’ and is in India for a quick and cheap hip replacement. She has brought her own biscuits and pickle: If I can’t pronounce it I don’t really eat it’. On her arrival at the hotel, she turns around and says, ‘There’s an Indian there.’ She makes a brilliant racist.

Douglas (Bill Nighy) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) whose marriage is falling apart can ill afford anything back home having given their savings to their daughter for a business venture. Douglas goes with the flow and Jean absolutely hates her life and India.

Graham (Tom Wilkinson) a dignified gay gentleman, a retired high court judge, the only one who knew India,a very different India, as a young man. He ventures out to look for his lost love and finds a beautiful and touching end.

Madge (Celia Imrie) is on the look-out for a rich Maharaja, and I do believe she succeeds in finding one.

Norman (Ronald Pickup), an outrageous rake, is desperate for that last sex fling with help of Viagra and a paperback copy of Kama Sutra. He succeeds without Viagra.

The totally optimistic, energetic and hardworking Sonny is the young manager who has great vision for his hotel for senior citizens. He is also in love with the beautiful Sunaina (Tena Desae). His mother tries to put a stop to his ambitious dream of succeeding with his plans for the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as a place ‘where it could be so wonderful that people will refuse to die.’ She also tries to crush his desire to marry the girl he loves.

A brilliant movie directed by John Madden, director of many other brilliant movies and television series.

The well-written script is adapted from the novel ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ by Deborah Moggach.

And the gist of it all: Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it’s not (yet) the end.