For a disparate group of English pensioners, retirement takes an unconventional turn when they abandon their homeland, enticed by advertisements for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a seemingly luxurious sanctuary for “the elderly and beautiful” in Jaipur, India. On arrival, they discover that the hotel falls somewhat short of the romantic idyll promised in the brochure, but they are gradually won over by the ever-optimistic young manager Sonny (Dev Patel), and tentatively embark on a new adventure, finding that life can begin again when you let go of the past.
Reviews
Empire Magazine
Anna Smith
“Charming, delightful and amusing - just what you'd expect from the star-studded cast of veterans. ”
20/02/2012
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
“The whole thing is poignant, watchable and gently amusing. I can’t think of many people over 50 who would not enjoy it. And it offers a welcome glow of Indian warmth in a cold winter. If you can’t afford a holiday right now, see this movie - it’s an entertaining alternative.”
24/02/2012
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Screen
Mark Adams
“Oddly a rather unmemorable title despite its jaunty nature ... engaging in the rather simplistic way it presents the notion of embracing a new culture as a way of making a brave new life.”
18/02/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
David Gritten
“Some of the wince-inducing clichés are straight from travel brochures: at one point Dench’s Evelyn calls India ’an assault on the senses.’ Major themes – poverty, the caste system, arranged marriages – are dutifully but briefly touched upon.”
23/02/2012
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The Scotsman
Siobhan Synnot
“If only John Madden’s film was less cautious and conservative. The most unlikely speech comes from Wilton’s fed-up expat, who claims to find this India too exotic and foreign. It’s unlikely, because The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel feasts on cultural clichés as if they were a chicken tikka masala banquet. ”
21/02/2012
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The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
“India is presented as a country full of lovable but slightly crazy people whom our band of veterans, themselves not lacking in eccentricity, view with some suspicion but gradually grow to accept. The story has been turned into an often farcical comedy, the dark side of which is only apparent if you look hard and long enough.”
24/02/2012
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
“We know that after initial discomforts – cockroaches, strange food – everyone will settle down, learn wisdom and elegiacally unravel. This is Eat Pray Love for British wrinklies: Eat Fray Love.”
23/02/2012
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The Times
Kate Muir
“More a lukewarm M&S chicken tikka masala ready meal. We all like a microwave curry now and then, but this heads towards a Slanket on the sofa and the comfortable voyeurism of Saga magazine’s travel section. Apparently India is noisy, crowded and colourful. And the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is not exactly as it was portrayed in the Photoshopped brochure. So our pensioners must make do, swing a little, and thus learn more about themselves in a foreign land.”
24/02/2012
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Variety
Leslie Felperin
“The powerhouse cast is so capable, the actors just about manage to play the pic as if it were a "Midsummer Night's Dream"-style frothy farce, with marigold garlands and picturesque poverty. Even when things grow a bit darker, there are still zingers to be enjoyed, such as when Imrie's vampish Madge, dreading old age, tartly declaims, "I don't want to be the first person they let off the train in a hostage crisis."”
18/02/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
“All the way through, it has sparkling one-liners delivered by some of our most distinguished actors, and it's undoubtedly positive in its representation of the over-sixties. It's just a tad ironic that a film in praise of new horizons should settle into such a well-worn groove.”
26/02/2012
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Channel 4 Film
Anton Bitel
“There is some posturing towards the taboo topic of geriatric sex, but it is all presented with a rakish nod and a wink, while the loss of libido that can come with advancing years is a topic raised only to be summarily dismissed lest it bring down the film's fairytale idyll of aging. Death, too, is presented as a decorous, aestheticised affair, coming at the exact moment when life's fulfilment has been attained, and accompanied by quiet repose and birds in poetic flight - as though the end itself were just another package holiday.”
24/02/2012
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The Observer
Philip French
“... shallow but not wholly untruthful ...”
26/02/2012
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The Sunday Times
Edward Porter
“The seven British retirees who are this film’s central characters naturally object to being condescended to by people who assume they are past it. The film’s makers seem unconcerned, however, by the possibility of there being another kind of condescension at work — in the idea that what pensioners want to see at the movies is broad, tame comic melodramas about oldies being defiant and feisty, yet still a bit unsure about how to use the internet.”
26/02/2012
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Total Film
Mark Samuels
“Deborah Moggach’s These Foolish Things, the novel on which this film is based, had a serious point to make about the best way to care for an ageing population. Yet that seems to have got lost in transit. Writer Ol Parker focuses instead on fish-out-of-water business involving spicy food and crappy plumbing while playing up the customary Indian clichés. ”
13/02/2012
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
“Needs a Stannah chairlift to get it up to any level of watchability, and it is not exactly concerned to do away with condescending stereotypes about old people, or Indian people of any age. It's a film which looks as if it has been conceived to be shown on a continuous loop in a Post Office queue.”
23/02/2012
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
“The actors are too accomplished to embarrass themselves, though Ol Parker's screenplay makes it a close-run thing.”
24/02/2012
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Time Out
Ben Walters
“A superficial take on contemporary India: beaming kids play cricket, wise old men proffer advice and standard-issue star-crossed young lovers are saddled with lines like ‘You’re part of a modern India my mother cannot welcome!’ Such tin-eared dialogue is pretty typical, and the various plot strands trundle along to their predictable termini, the occasional unexpected quirk quickly reabsorbed into the flow. ”
21/02/2012
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