The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)

Film: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015)
Stars: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Dev Patel, Richard Gere
Director: John Madden
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I will admit right up front that I wasn't planning on seeing The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  It just wasn't on the To Do list, to be honest.  I had already added it to the Netflix queue, to pursue at my leisure, and will admit that the initial film hadn't worn particularly memorable in the old cranium.  The film seemed fine, but forgettable, a weird conundrum of a hit that I have to celebrate (I love living in a world where Maggie Smith and Judi Dench can open art house hits in a major way).  However, I have been desperate for quality films in recent weeks.  Seriously-what is going on at the movies lately?  Home and Get Hard are expected to drive whom, exactly, to the movies?  Bored parents and people who aren't sick of Kevin Hart or Will Ferrell?  So with my art house cinema slate almost completely viewed (Landmark Theaters, let's get on this, and let's all pray Women in Gold is a good movie), I ventured forward to see a sequel to a film I didn't love the first time around, but merely liked.

(Spoilers Ahead) I will admit that the film had more confidence in being memorable than it actually was in my memory, as the first twenty minutes were spent more on trying to recall exactly where the last film left-off.  Who was which character, and quite frankly I was flummoxed as to what had happened between Judi Dench and Bill Nighy's characters, as they clearly were romantically involved in my memory and yet they still hadn't quite sealed the "girlfriend/boyfriend" card yet in the film.

The movie is really just a check-in on the characters as we last saw them, and for the most part nothing really changes from there other than continued "moving on with life."  The film chronicles the lives of people who are getting on in India, though sadly without Tom Wilkinson (whose presence was much-missed).  The movie is refreshing in many ways.  For starters, death doesn't hang in the air nearly as ardently as it could have, or which is typical of people over the age of 70 in films.  The only character who has the linger of death in the air is Maggie Smith's Muriel, who gets distressing medical news offscreen but doesn't actually die onscreen.  Quite frankly, since they had dealt with this already in the first film and because Smith's character already had an arc to work here (becoming an entrepreneur so late in her life, and impressing with her candor), I kind of wish they had skipped that all together as it was unnecessary and took away from the other refreshing stories.

Some of those included Judi Dench's brilliant move to sales for a fabric distributor.  There's a marvelous scene when she gets a job offer where she says, "but I'm 79!" and the woman, at least 25 years her junior, proclaims, "it doesn't bother us if it doesn't bother you."  I thought this was brilliant, particularly because you so rarely see new career options so late in life in film (or even more sad, in real life), and because she clearly has a knack for this job, so why not hire her?  This was one of many touches in the film that I enjoyed-you also had the confusing but fascinating take on monogamy modeled by Diana Hardcastle's Carol and Ronald Pickup's Norman, the sexual awakening of Celia Imrie's Madge, and perhaps best of the side characters, the challenge of Penelope Wilton's Jean.  Really Wilton deserves special honors for taking a character that occasionally seemed too sharp to be believable in the last film and giving her a lonely humane edge.  There's a scene late in the movie where Dench confronts her about her imaginary fiance, and she admits that life hasn't been kind to her, and she's trying desperately to make it look the way that she wants.  There's something deeply honest in that that you rarely see in movies-we're not supposed to admit failure or loneliness or quite frankly even effort in real life, and I loved this moment as Dench's character doesn't view it as a victory or even a moment of pity, but one of recognition of a shared feeling.

This is really where the film works-it's quite frankly better as an adult drama, something we almost never get in cinema today, not unless it also revolves around being a parent (which is almost never an issue for even the parents seen onscreen in Second Best Exotic).  The movie falls apart when it focuses on Dev Patel's ludicrously over-the-top Sonny, who is constantly making a fool of himself, and while he's adorable, between Tina Desae and Freida Pinto it does appear that casting directors may be overestimating his sex appeal.

Overall, then, I will say that while it shares so much with its predecessor that I can't really go above three-stars, I actually found this trip more enjoyable.  Without character flaws to cling to and more fully-formed personalities we saw more realistic human beings in front of us, and I rather enjoyed my second stay at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel better than the first.