The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is kind of in the same vein as the rash of ensemble romantic comedies centered around a holiday or those directed by Woody Allen. Each of the actors here get a bit of storyline, some better than others, although none of them are very strongly developed. But they all have something to do with the problems of getting older. The framing story is that a young Indian man (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire) manages his family's crumbling hotel, and has decided to "outsource old age" by catering to seniors in their golden years. Based on a book.


The movie's centralmost character is played by Judi Dench, a recent widow who is at a loss at what to do now that her husband has died. On a whim she goes to Jaipur and gets a job at a call center. She also starts a blog which is a new experience to her.

Tom Wilkinson is a judge who decided to retire before it is decided for him. He lived in India as a youth and has returned to find a lost love. 

Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton are a married couple who have sunk their savings into their daughter's business, so can't afford the first class retirement the wife wants. Instead they go the cheap route in India. He is up for trying anything and doing things on his own, but she is the type to find everything dirty and strange and just wants to go home. 

Maggie Smith plays a medical tourist there to get a hip surgery. She is also a racist so to depend on Indian people to care for her is degrading to her.  She accidentally forms a relationship with an Indian servant girl, one of those considered of low caste/unclean, because Maggie's character too was a domestic when she was younger.

Celia Imrie is a grandmother looking for a new husband.  Ronald Pickup is a randy senior who wants sex. 
Dev Patel as the optimistic hotel manager also gets a bit of storyline as he is trying to prove himself with his girlfriend as well as his mother to make the business a success.

While the film itself showed a more realistically ethnic side of India than most films, it still is not as rustic and real as it could have been for my taste or if this were a dramatic film instead of a comedy. I didn't learn much new about Indians that I haven't seen or read elsewhere.  The storylines were not developed very deeply although some had more dramatic plots than others.  The least agreeable to me where the ones involving Imrie and Pickup, both run of the mill and not very interesting.  Maggie Smith as usual gets some good one-liners although some of the other characters get one here and there as well.  The character of the servant girl gets more development than I thought she would and probably would have given more insight for Western audience but here too it is just a plot development so that Maggie Smith can have someone to identify with.  Almost all the Indian characters are there to serve as backdrop to the Brits' problems.