The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has a cast including Judi Dench (Evelyn), Maggie Smith (Muriel), Bill Nighy (Douglas), Dev Patel (Sonny), and Richard Gere (Guy Chambers).
It is a sequel to the 2011 film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’, which I never saw, nor even knew existed.
The idea is that a hotel in India becomes a permanent residence for elderly retirees at their last stopping point before their journey to ‘the great beyond’.
We follow their relationships and interactions, all wrapped up in the hotel proprietors (Sonny) desire to expand his hotel into another additional location, and his pitch to the (supposedly) undercover Hotel evaluator (Guy Chambers).
Sonny is willing to go to almost any length, up to and including sending his mother as an ‘offering’ to Chambers, in an attempt to secure the financing for the expansion.
In the meantime Sonny sacrifices a bit of his relationship with his fiancé,
Sunaina (played by Tena Desae), because she is wanting him to focus more on their upcoming wedding, than his business plans.
I thought the movie was ok, it had some funny parts. My husband almost fell asleep twice during it because it moved along pretty slowly.
It wouldn’t have been my pick to see ‘on the big screen’, to me, it just doesn’t need a movie screen to tell its story.
My guess is folks in the older generation will appreciate it and enjoy it much more than we did.
It certainly wasn’t ‘horrible’, it was just slow and rambling, without enough funny parts to hold our interest.
I would give this movie 2.5 out of 5 stars.
