(L-R) Lillete Dubey, Dev Patel, Richard Gere, Tena Desae, Ronald Pickup, Judi Dench, and Bill Nighy. (Fox Searchlight)
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 is to Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants; the sequel is darker than the first. These films cater to demographics to which I don’t belong: the elderly and tweens. But the modest franchises draw me like a sentimental moth to flames that guarantee certain annihilation. Far from the Citizen Kane of their subgenres, they won’t satisfy anyone looking for visceral action or nuanced drama, but they wiggle their formulaic rumps in the direction of paying audience’s tear ducts until water inevitably and uncontrollably gushes.
The 2011 film (read my review here) introduced you to the elder British tourists (an assemblage of distinguished actors) who gathered at the modest inn run by Sonny Kapoor (Chappie’s Dev Patel). Second Best immerses you in the faraway world that went on without you, now on our shores. It opens with an unexpected musical cue: George Thorogood (I didn’t say it was a bold musical cue). The occasion for this road music is a cross-country drive on Route 66. Sonny is driving the cantankerous Muriel Donnelly (Dame Maggie Smith) to a business meeting in San Diego. If Sonny is a Western caricature of deferential Indian hospitality, he has his own caricature of America as a land where you drive a convertible with the top down in order to ensure that your knighted elderly companion gets bugs in her hair.
The business meeting sets up the film’s conceit. Sonny and Muriel want to expand their hotel franchise in Jaipur with a second property, and ask American investors to help them buy a fixer-upper. There is a catch—the American company plans to send a hotel inspector to visit the original Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful.
In the first movie, the ensemble cast travelled to find themselves, but this film finds them mostly drifting, or worse. The film is divided into sections as Sonny and Sunaina prepare for their big Indian wedding, but as the young get ready for their new life together, young and old alike are in various stages of crisis. Sonny is threatened by the smooth-talking Kushal (Shazad Latif), who he fears is a rival for the affections of his fiancée Sunaina (Tina Desai). Elder Lothario Norman (Ronald Pickup) worries that he has inadvertently put out a contract on his wife (Diana Hardcastle). Gold-digger Madge (Celia Imrie) can’t decide which of two wealthy Indian men she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Douglas (Bill Nighy) is in love with Evelyn (Dame Judi Dench), but she’s been offered a new job that may take her away from him. When new guest Guy Chambers (Richard Gere) arrives at the hotel, Sonny suspects he’s the dreaded hotel inspector, and when Guy takes a shine to Sonny’s mother (Lillette Dubey), he arranges an uncomfortable assignation.
John Madden’s direction smooths out a potentially disturbing screenplay. Ol Parker adapted the first film from Deborah Moggach’s 2004 novel These Foolish Things, but Moggach did not write a sequel, so these entanglements are the screenwriter’s invention, studio-sanctioned fan fiction based on modestly admired characters. “Yes,” I imagine Parker’s brainstorm, ”Sonny will pimp out his mother to a mysterious American stranger!” Naturally, everything works out in the end, but not before a series of complications get the ensemble cast tangled and untangled in mostly predictable and occasionally cringeworthy ways. If you don’t think The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is your cup of tea, it isn’t. But if you think it might be, go ahead and see it, and bring a hankie or wear an absorbent sweater.
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The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Directed by John Madden
Written by Ol Parker
With Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Dev Patel, Richard Gere, Bill Nighy
Rated PG for some language and suggestive comments
Running time 122 minutes
Opens today at a theater with comfortable seating near you.
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