Occam's Razor

This movie answers the burning question: what do the actors of Downton Abbey do off-season? I can’t say what all of them do, but the film will answer the question of what Maggie Smith (the Dowager Countess) and Penelope Wilton (Isobel Crawley) do, which is do movies together, well, at least The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Wilton is principally a British TV actor. Maggie Smith’s career needs no introduction. She inspires in most admirers a sense of awe with her amazing and seemingly reflexive acting. She can broadcast more meaning from a single stare or a turn of the head that many actors can do in the course of an entire movie. Like the late Robin Williams, Smith can make even a mediocre movie memorable, which helps in the case with The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I suspect men who see the movie will share my opinion about its mediocrity. Most women who see it will probably be like my wife, who was crying at the end. In short, at the risk of showing gender bias, I strongly suspect that this is principally a chick flick.

It’s also a movie for old folks. With a few exceptions, the entire cast is sixty plus, and in most cases seventy plus. As such while the movie certainly has its comic moments, the subtext is that going from old to ancient is not an easy process. Each of these senior citizens deals with the problem in their own way. For example, there is Evelyn Greenslade (Judi Dench) who won’t let the fact that she is turning eighty keep her from a career buying fabric in India for her company. She has a knack for finding great stuff, stuff that will prove highly fashionable, and for getting it at discounted rates. For Muriel Donnelly (Maggie), her job seems to be to give up control. She and her much younger business partner Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel) run The Best Marigold Hotel in India. Sonny is an energetic young man anxious to prove his business acumen, which is why he and Muriel start the movie in San Diego seeking venture capital from hotel moguls. But mostly the movie takes place at their hotel. Aside from the staff it appears to be populated with white, 60+ Americans and Brit ex-pats who check in but never seem to check out. The clientele is so stable that Sonny and his fiancé Sunaina (Tina Desai) do a daily roll call every day by yelling their names from the open-air lobby, mainly to see if their permanent guests are still alive.

This is a movie with several tracks that clumsily intertwine. One is Sonny’s desperate need to prove his business acumen by creating a second Marigold Hotel. The other is Sonny’s jealousy. He suspects that Sunaina actually prefers their flashy friend Kushal (Shazad Latif) because he is smarter and more entrepreneurial. The rest is a conglomeration of issues with many white people aging. These include Douglas (Bill Nighy), who is technically married and estranged but loves Evelyn with a dopey puppy love that would be cute except he is seventy something. For the women there is the eye candy of Guy Chambers (Richard Gere) to stalk. And there is a fair amount of aging infidelity, of the heart if not of the body, between these aging seniors. Happily the older men are of an age where they fall for personalities not good looking older women. Judy Dench and Maggie Smith are great actresses, but both are packing on the pounds they try to hide behind large blousy dresses.

So it definitely helps to be a much older person to appreciate the movie. For a weekday matinee our theater was surprisingly full, and virtually all of them were senior citizens. This is not surprising due to the day of the week, but also because there are not a whole lot of movies out there marketed for seniors. So this movie is a special treat for them, and something they can relate to instead of another superhero movie featuring impossibly gorgeous people in their twenties. So kudos, with some exceptions, for at least giving us a cast where character is more attractive than looks. With the exception of Gere, none of these seniors will win a senior beauty contest.

Sonny makes for an amusing and energetic if somewhat frantic co-owner. He provides decent entertainment for any of the under fifty crowd that shows up. Filmed principally in India, it of course must have a Bollywood element, which means there must be singing and dancing in it somewhere. Most of it happens at the wedding at the end of the movie. It makes for an interesting amalgamation of Hollywood and Bollywood.

But principally this is a relationship movie, which is what makes it a chick flick. A lot of the pairings don’t make a whole lot of sense to this older male, and overall it seems to be much ado about nothing. However, it at least fills a rarely filled niche of decent movie for the seventy plus crowd. Its basic message: your old but you’re not dead. Enjoy life in whatever way you can while you still have it. And just because you are much older doesn’t mean you won’t encounter a lot of heartache along the way, not to mention new opportunities for love and personal growth.

Both Maggie Smith and Judi Dench though provide plenty of incentive to see the movie regardless of its targeted market. Like a fine wine, these actors age well on camera. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is not a great use of two hours, but it’s a pretty good use of the time. In general, the older you are the more this movie is likely to tickle your fancy. If relationship movies are your thing, go for it. How nice to get through a movie without anyone dying from a gunshot wound.

3.0 out of four-stars.

[xrr rating=3.0/4]