Review: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Movie reviewers love surprises. We watch so many movies that it is hard to tolerate the routine and predictable. This is why some of us (okay, I mean myself) have the bad habit of starting too many positive reviews with the phrase "pleasant surprise." We delight in unexpected plot twists and non-standard endings, sometimes to the point where we overrate movies with these qualities.

I was lukewarm about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel because after I read the press release, I felt it would hold no surprises for me whatsoever. I could predict the whole damn movie, and probably my review as well. A bunch of older British people with drab, unsatisfying lives move to India where they would be shocked and dismayed at first, but gradually would see the beauty of life and the wonders of the universe. Someone would fall in love, someone would find an unexpected friend, someone would have an epiphany. Cliches would abound. Despite what was unquestionably an amazing cast, I would be checking my watch regularly, perhaps even predicting which plot point would happen at what time.

While some of my general predictions about the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel were indeed pretty accurate, the movie still surprised and delighted me. Expected plot points held unexpected twists. I haven't read Deborah Moggach's novel These Foolish Things, which Ol Parker adapted into this film -- I don't know whether the scenes I liked best should be credited to the novel, the screenplay or director John Madden. Perhaps Parker and Madden knew that many of the basic aspects of the story followed well-trodden ground and decided to avoid cliches, or at least spin them around. And naturally I was happy to be correct about the excellent perfomances from a cast of superstar British character actors.

Judi Dench shines brightest here as Evelyn, the widow who decides to learn to take care of herself, and Tom Wilkinson is an especial pleasure to watch as a retired lawyer with a hidden reason for returning to India. Maggie Smith coaxes us into sympathizing with her complaining, racist character Muriel, in India to save money and time on necessary surger. Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton bring us a believably bickering couple; she's continually dissatisfied, he's continually accommodating (a 180-degree turn from the couple they played in Shaun of the Dead). Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup make the most out of one-note characters, and Dev Patel's optimistic but ill-starred hotel owner is a playful puppy gamboling among the older characters.

At times, the region of India where the hotel "for the elderly and beautiful" is located seems like a variation of what Spike Lee calls the "magical Negro" character, an outsider who makes everything all right for the nice white people in trouble. Even the poor people and impoverished areas are beautifully photographed, and a call center is full of such delightful employees that I feel like I should patronize overseas customer service more often.

But The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is meant to be a delightful, diverting movie, meant to charm you, not to depict stark realism. And charm me it did, nearly as much as filmmaker John Madden's much-lauded movie Shakespeare in Love. I confess I was worried about bringing my husband along and predicted he would fall asleep. He ended up liking it as much as I did. Perhaps I should stop making predictions about movies, except for the thrill of being proven wrong.