Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, and I are continuing our Comfy Cozy Cinema this week with our impressions of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a movie based on the book These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach. It was released in 2011 and directed by John Madden and includes an all star line up.

“We have a saying in India – ‘Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright, it is not the end’,”

Sonny Kapoor in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

We are watching movies each week and then writing about them on Thursdays on our blogs from September to the end of October. If you want to join in with us, we will have link ups at the end of the posts each week that will be open several days after the posts are published. In other words, you don’t have to post your impressions on the day we do.

To summarize a bit first, this movie is about a couple and five other people who all see an ad online about a hotel in India where they can move to for a different experience and to save money. The ad boasts that the hotel is exotic and beautiful and recently remodeled.

Sadly, once the residents arrive, they find out the ad was very misleading. Less sadly, the manager is a wonderful young man who means well.

Sonny (Dev Patel) is trying to run the hotel and build it up so he can stand on his own, without the support of his rich mother and brothers who think he’s a screw up like their father apparently was.

Sonny is also dating a young woman (Tina Desai) but wants to have something to show that he is successful before he proposes to her. He is also afraid to tell her he loves her because he feels like he doesn’t have to say it. He has to show it.

I watched this movie several years ago and enjoyed watching it again – this time with a different set of eyes, so to speak.

Confession time – I love Judi Dench in pretty much anything I see her in, honestly. I did not plan on suggesting two movies with her and Maggie Smith together but, well, that’s happened because I love the two together. I actually forgot Maggie was in this one when I picked it, but I love that she was. I wish they had had more time together on screen since they are best friends in real life (hello Tea With The Dames.)

Each character in this movie is facing their own challenge.

We have Judi’s character, Evelyn, who is dealing with the aftermath of the death of her husband who she realizes did everything for her over the years and has left her with nothing and nowhere to go.

There is Jean (Penelope Wilton) and Doug Ainslie (Bill Nighy) who have come to the harsh realization that all the money they thought they had to use in their retirement is gone. They are now being forced to buy a smaller home and travel less, but they hope moving to the hotel will give them the opportunity to do something new and exciting and experience life fresh again. Jean is hoping for more prestige and riches, if we’re honest, and she’s in for a rude awakening.

Celia Imrie is a woman who moves from man to man but feels like because she is getting older that ship has sailed so she decides to head to India to see if she can hook one more rich man.

Norm (Ronald Pickup….that’s  his real name) wants to – ahem – sow his seeds, so to speak, one or several more times with a pretty woman and looks at the trip to India as a chance to do that.

Graham (Tom Wilkinson) is a judge who has burnt out and returns to India to look up an old lover – a man whose life he’s sure he ruined when they had an affair when they were younger. That affair went against the Indian man’s faith and he is certain it ruined the man’s life over the next 40 years. He wants to find him to tell him he still loves him but also apologize.

Muriel (Maggie Smith) needs hip surgery but will have to wait a long time if she stays in England so a doctor offers her the opportunity to travel to India to  have the surgery done quicker. One big problem? She’s a raging racist/bigot. Eek. Of course there is more to her story and we never do exactly understand why she is racist but we do see some redemption.

I believe it is absolutely possible to fall in love with every single character in this film with exception to one but even in that case I could actually understand her.

Jean is a difficult character. She’s nasty, stuck up, and selfish. It might be an unpopular opinion but I feel that she’s also scared. She is absolutely terrified of what her life is going to be like now that she’s older. She thought life would turn out differently than it has and now she is lost and she is frightened and though that isn’t an excuse of how she acts, it is probably why she is so snotty and negative.

She not only makes her husband’s life miserable but ruins the experiences of everyone around her. She sucks the fun out of everything and toward the end of the movie it is clear that she is desperately trying to hang on to the control she has had her entire life, partially thanks to her weak husband. Doug is sweet and excited to experience India, don’t get me wrong, but he should have stood up to his wife long ago.

According to information online, “most of the filming took place in the Indian state of Rajasthan, including the cities of Jaipur and Udaipur. Ravla Khempur, an equestrian hotel which was originally the palace of a tribal chieftain in the village of Khempur, was chosen as the site for the film hotel.”

I always like sharing some trivia about the movies I watch so here are a few from this one:

• Tom Wilkinson, who plays Graham, is actually married to Diana Hardcastle, who is the woman Norman hits on in the movie.
• The hotel is actually the Ravla Khempur; a hotel with stables that is located in Khempur in the state of Rajasthan. Built in 1620, it served for centuries as the residence of a series of village chieftains, eventually being converted into a hotel. Due to the success of this film, the place was renamed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
• Jean Ainslie (Dame Penelope Wilton) reads “Tulip Fever” by Deborah Moggach, on whose novel, “These Foolish Things”, this movie was based. Tulip Fever (2017) was filmed a few years later.
• The cast includes two Oscar winners: Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith; and three Oscar nominees: Tom Wilkinson and Dev Patel and Bill Nighy.
• Bill Nighy and Hugh Dickson previously worked together in the BBC Radio drama The Lord of the Rings, as Sam and Elrond, respectively. The roles of Bilbo and Aragorn were played by Ian Holm and Robert Stephens, who were formerly married to Penelope Wilton and Maggie Smith.

(trivia sources Imbd.com.)

This is a movie that drew me in from the beginning. I truly wanted to know what happened to each character. I laughed and cried – you know – all the cliché things but I think I understood the movie even more now that I am also getting older.

There is a lot of fear and uncertainty for these “pensioners” as they are called in the UK. They are over the age of 60 and in some cases they’ve never even really experienced life. They have a lot to teach and a lot to learn and we learn right along with them.

My favorite characters are Evelyn and Sonny. We see changes in all of the characters but these two truly transform and connect throughout the movie.

I just saw that there is a sequel to this film that was released in 2015 and I hope to watch that this weekend.

Have you seen this one? What did you think of it?

Here is a copy of our schedule for the next few weeks:

I hope you will join in or at least follow along as we discuss these movies.

You can find Erin’s impression of the movie here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/09/12/comfy-cozy-cinema-the-best-exotic-marigold-hotel/

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/js/widget/load.js?id=c0efdbe6b4add43dd7ef