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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is now a big hit. Catering for the more mature resident, the ever-positive Sonny (Dev Patel) is keen on expanding his empire to a second residency but he needs help. An unlikely supporter is found in the irritable yet wise form of Muriel (Maggie Smith) who is helping the youngster who himself is on the verge of getting married to Sunaina (Tina Desai). The other long-term visitors all have their own issues to deal with, as Madge (Celia Imrie) is trying to juggle the affections of two local men and Evelyn and Douglas (Judi Dench and Bill Nighy) continue to slowly fall in love. Into this mix arrives a suave American (Richard Gere) who is hiding his true motives from everyone around him.
There are few films that can genuinely be called “sleeper” hits these days, our veracious appetite for movie news and character posters have seen to that. In a recent interview Sam Taylor-Johnson spoke of the pressure she faced when trying to make the recent smash “Fifty Shades of Grey”, as the trailer was released before she had even finished filming. If it’s not much vaunted blockbusters then its festivals and awards buzz. One way or another, a surprise hit is a rare beast indeed.
The first film in this series, somehow managed to achieve “sleeper” status. The cast were certainly not newcomers, but the film itself still came out without much fanfare but managed to find an audience. Less than three years later we get the sequel, and leading the way are two Dames: Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. Both are as good as ever, although Smith’s character now appears to have had a complete personality transplant from the vile racist we saw at the start of the first film. Now she can’t do enough to help local boy Sonny. Must be the magical waters of India.
This tone, which errs on mystical reverence to the East, treads a very fine line between amusing and insulting. Dev Patel gives it his all as Sonny, but the perpetual head nodding enthusiasm is almost the sort of thing Benny Hill would do. Throwing in a traditional Indian wedding, full of colour, music and elephants is lazy shorthand. Do we get a Bollywood style dance sequence at the end? Why of course we do.
When we step away from the intense need to showcase the host nation, the story actually does hit a few high points. Dench and Nighy play out the sort of awkward, stuttering romance that we can all identify with. The addition of Richard Gere to the cast may at first seem like a desperate attempt to cater for the American market, where the original film did particularly well, but the actor seems to be onboard wholeheartedly. He is given a fairly meaty role, complete with a love story of his own, which plays out surprisingly well.
A film like this was never going to deal with the problems of real poverty or deprivation that exists in India. Instead we get the cocooned and sanitised version that makes for pleasant cinema. If you want to recommend a film to your nan, then this is the one to go for.