Masterpiece Theater’s golden age moves eastward. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about a retirement home for aging Englishfolk in India. Unlike the hotel in the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is too overstuffed to leave a lasting impression. However, the intimidating, talented cast elevates what could have been a pedestrian screenplay into a passable two hours of screen time. British accents always work best at hiding flaws.
In a quick introduction, we are introduced to the principals: a recently widowed homemaker (Judi Dench), a poor elderly couple (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton), a retired politician with a secret (Tom Wilkinson), an aging bigot (Maggie Smith) who needs a hip operation, and two singles looking for love (Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup). All 7 are coincidentally on the same flight to the same destination – Florida with elephants as promised in their brochure. They immediately find the Hotel run by Sonny (Dev Patel) is not what was promised, causing each of the guests to react in predictable ways. Sonny has other problems as well, since his mother (Lillete Dubey) does not approve of his relationship with his girlfriend (Tena Desae).
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has a couple of plot lines too many, causing all the plotlines except Dench’s to be underdeveloped. The singles’ storyline as well as Sonny’s family problems could easily have been excised, focusing on the more compelling characters in the story and giving them more character development to flesh out. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel threatens to unravel because of the excess of plot lines when characters purely act based on where they “should” end up according to the story. This does a disservice to the actors and makes the “happy endings” unearned and insulting to the audience’s intelligence.
With this many plotlines going on, the story uses Judi Dench as its backbone. Dench’s resume is obviously renowned; director John Madden uses her voiceover as an audience surrogate and third person omniscient, creating the connection to the characters. This choice allows the story to casually take place around Dench, and makes the editing seamless and relaxed. Because Dench’s character has an open mind, the fish-out-of-water story isn’t as shocking for the characters except the obvious ones, but it uses Dench’s acting ability to anchor the story and provide the most compelling arc, which is a fair tradeoff.
Dench may be the anchor, but she is flanked by equally superior talent. Tom Wilkinson gets a nice arc with his secret; his story is completely told by the end of the film. Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith take what are weakly written characters and elevate them to not only decent but surprisingly complex. Marigold Hotel would not be as satisfying without either of them. Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie, and Ronald Pickup demonstrate how a screenplay can disservice and actor. Of the non-AARP cast, Dev Patel plays manic energy well, but there is no real arc like in Slumdog Millionaire.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is harmless enjoyable entertainment. If you want to see great acting shine, and witty repartee between timeless English thespians, then this is the movie for you. It does give someone a great business idea though: if British actors train call center operators on how to talk to elderly people who have trouble with the internet, we will make a killing in service contracts.