12DOVE Verdict
This genial, over-stuffed return boasts more national treasures than the British Museum. But tinny plots and predictable scripting mean it lives up to its title.
Why you can trust 12DOVE Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.
Bed and bored.
A bit of a hostage to fortune, that title. After charmed audiences propelled 2012’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to a $137m gross, it must have seemed pretty bomb-proof, though.
But there’s a distinct whiff of reheated second helpings about this admittedly jolly return to Jaipur’s jauntiest Brit-packed retirement home, where manager Sonny (a manically wisecracking Dev Patel) is wrestling with hotel-chain expansion plans and wedding worries, while director John Madden ensures that Judi Dench’s love-wary widow and Maggie Smith’s world-weary manager get lashings of screen time. Smith’s world-class way with an acid remark (“America? It made death look tempting”) cuts fearlessly through screenwriter Ol Parker’s sentimentality-inclined script.
Having used up all of the culture-clash plots and curry gags last time around, the film settles for a gentle will-they-won’t-they romance between Dench and fellow resident Bill Nighy. Beautifully played and often touching, it’s not a pulse-racer, however. So the film is over-reliant on Sonny’s frantic and farcical attempts to win over mystery visitor Richard Gere, whom he suspects is an undercover inspector from a US hotel chain, potential partners for a second hotel. Gere, chiefly cougar-candy for Celia Imrie’s rapacious retiree and Sonny’s haughty mother, feels shoehorned into an already bulging crew of vintage Brit thespians.
Like its predecessor, the film takes a travelogue view of India, throwing lavish Monsoon Wedding-style nuptials and Slumdog Millionaire-inspired dance routines into the mix to keep everything determinedly lively. Fewer sugary celebrations and some chewier late-life themes would have made this a much tastier sequel.
