The classic documentary, which is getting rereleased in theaters, has more interesting things to say about aging than the elderly expat dramedy that proves second time’s not the charm.
Lillete Dubey and Richard Gere in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Laurie Sparham / Fox Searchlight
Little Edie and Big Edie in Grey Gardens
Criterion Collection
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was The Avengers of aging-British-actor movies, bringing a supergroup of gray-haired talent together instead of comic book heroes. The two features even opened the same weekend in 2012, in what turned out to be a savvy bit of counter-programming. John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel skipped saving the world in favor of giving its stars a chance at the kind of spotlight and arcs seldom offered to performers in their later years. Its expat retirees got to fall in love and to have sex (without one requiring the other), to consider mortality and their purpose and place in the world, and to realize that life still had plenty of new experiences to offer. It was the kind of surprise hit that was actually utterly unsurprising, given how large the older moviegoing audience is, and how rarely it gets to see itself on screen in any significant showcase.
And, like any successful superhero franchise, there's now a sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which joking-but-for-real promises right in its title more of the same, just not as good — and it certainly delivers. The characters from the first film are almost all back — the dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Ronald Pickup, and Diana Hardcastle. Dev Patel makes another appearance as the overanimated hotel owner, along with Tina Desai as his fiancée and Lillete Dubey as his widowed mother, leaving newcomers Richard Gere, David Strathairn, and Tamsin Greig to crowd into the already overstuffed film. (Madden and screenwriter Ol Parker have also returned.) Everyone gets a new storyline, most of which curiously peter out into nothing, as if anything so final as an ending would be too much to handle.
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