What do you do when find yourself past your prime and your bank account not living up to it’s expectations? Retire to a run down hotel in India, of course.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel shows us a number of older folks, all great British actors with familiar faces, do the best they can in a place that doesn’t live up to their expectations.
We watch them go about the business of adjusting and adapting. The film’s catchphrase- Everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end –pretty much sums up everything our grumpy group of oldsters needs to know. What is lost will be found, what is asked will be answered, and so on and so forth.
The actors are the best part and include Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup. We only have a couple of villain to speak of, and they aren’t so much villains as people who want something different than what they find.
The other big star of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is India, an odd and interesting place where the food is too spicy, the traffic is insanely dangerous, and there are just way too many people. I liked looking at it, but I’m not sure I’d ever want to retire there.
It was a fun movie with a few touching moments, a few laughs, and a few moments to pause and think about life, the universe, and everything.
