Title: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Opens: May 4, 2012

Not even on a National Geographic presentation or from a Disney nature movie will you find a riot of color that Ben Davis captures exquisitely in John Madden’s “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” With a witty script by Ol Parker adapted from Deborah Maggoach’s novel “These Foolish Things,” and an array of top British and Indian actors to add brightness to the experience, “Marigold Hotel” stands as one of the few movies with an audience demographic over the age of sixty. This is not to say that youths would stay away from the box office: for them, Madden gives us a man and woman in their early twenties, the man standing up to his mother in insisting on marrying the woman of his choice. There is much to find funny and still a lot that comes across as tragic, as the story plumbs the depths of emotions in a group of elderly British men and women who take a risk, starting a new chapter of their lives in a country whose customs are hardly what you’ll see practiced in Piccadilly Circus.

We are introduced to an array of Brits with distinct idiosyncratic differences who for the most part bond during their lives on the other side of the world. Judy Dench, for example, stars as Evelyn, newly widowed and drowning in her late husband’s debts, who breaks from her comfortable life in England when she is made away of a residence in Jaipur called by its manager, Sonny (Dev Patel), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful.” Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton as Douglas and Jean are ready to celebrate their fortieth anniversary, unable to afford much because Douglas lost everything investing in his daughter’s Internet business. As Muriel, Maggie Smith is wheelchair-bound, unwilling to wait six months for a hip replacement but advised by her doctor to go to India where she can have the surgery almost immediately. Graham (Tom Wilkinson), a judge on a high court, finally makes the move after telling his colleagues for years that he is about to retire, while Ronald Pickup’s character, Norman, a womanizer who still goes to speed-dating emporiums, looks for a new start outside of England. Madge (Celia Imrie) is single after several marriages and like Norman is on the make, thinking she’ll have better luck in India.

Ol Parker’s script has considerable humor. Norman notes that he still has “what’s needed” but that nobody’s buying. Muriel, a pronounced racist who tells a nurse that a black doctor “cannot wash that off,” that she wants an English doctor, but is provided with what she requests, except that he’s ethnically Indian. One wonders why she’d want to travel to India where the doctor is guaranteed to be, for her, the wrong color. Jean is the least sympathetic, refusing to go outside the hotel, disgusted with everything about India, her emotions doubtless colored by her toxic relationship with husband Douglas—who is the movie’s most melodramatic scene lets it all hang out with a tsunami of criticisms. Sonny provided smiles by his energy, his enthusiasm, and his lack of organization in running a hotel that is deteriorating and may be put on the chopping block by a company that would buy it simply for the land to rebuild, but he is avidly pursuing Sunaina (Tena Desae), who works in a call center.

The comedy is balanced by tragedy: as one might have predicted, at least one member of the group is bound to die off, but what shines through, what makes this movie anchored in reality, is the notion that while adjustments are made and new relationships are tried, old age is no fun. For the most part, life passes people by, and death is omnipresent. Sorrow and pity, remorse and guilt, but on the other hand love and an appreciation of life’s infinite variety and beauty are manifest throughout. This is a well-constructed movie filled with endearing characters indulging in life’s color, variety, and hope.

Rated: PG-13. 122 minutes (c) 2012 by Harvey Karten, Member, NY Film Critics Online

Overall – A-