To bastardise a Roger Murtaugh quote - I’m too young for this shit.

Perhaps this review will be a little on the harsh side, particularly when I am obviously not its target demographic, but I find it rather depressing that an impressive ensemble cast is wasted on such lightweight fluff. The story - a group of 60+ Brits travel to India to spend their twilight years in luxury yet find the hotel to be anything but - is the sort of tired rubbish you’d find propping up the TV scheduling on a lazy Sunday evening. So what we get is a range of one-note characters each fulfilling their respective roles in the story. What a shame then that you cast…

The Box Office Bashing Season: 2003 to 2014

Oh look, Maggie Smith's a racist. I wonder if, by any chance, she might have changed her outlook by the end of the film.

There's just nothing to this film. It's a really bizarre comedy drama in that it's neither funny nor particularly dramatic. It just meanders its way through its over-long running time, have someone inevitably and tragically cark it, have someone else being presumed to have carked it, and that's it on the drama front.

Then have it be simultaneously patronising and admiring of India and Indian culture, throw in the usual jibes about Indian food giving you the shits, have the hotel owner be a gibbering moron who has…

Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end.

Some of the best british actors alive are assembled in a film about retirees moving to India, and feeling shocked by the culture differences.
A film packed with such a talented cast was expected to be, at least, watchable and funny. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is extremely boring, predictable and cliched.
John Madden has no idea of what he is doing throughout the movie because he doesn't care about the characters. It's just a mix of people, with no significant development and it's very hard to feel connected to them. Every moment of, let's call it, stronger emotions feels very…

The power of an actor, or in this case actors, can sometimes carry through a piece of work that without them wouldn't particularly stand out, and that's very much the case with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Elderly & Beautiful). John Madden's movie, based on the novel These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach, is directed with an elegant, cultured, charming malaise and very much has a script to match; his piece casually ambles it's way through a tale of senior citizens on a voyage of self-discovery as they trade in a set of dour, middle-class lives for the late vestiges of the Raj in Jaipur, a land of crumbled old buildings, eternal sunsets, noisy & loud streets and err... call…

I thought this was quite a clever and subtle film, of sorts. It does well at clearly depicting older generations prejudices - some characters appear distinctly unlikeable, certainly at the start. As the plot develops there is a lot of self reflection, some poignant dialogue and plenty of good cinematography, with some gorgeous Indian landscapes, or perhaps more photography, featured. It seems that the British visitors/tourists are markedly more pessimistic than the very young and upbeat hotel owner, who has a strong optimistic outlook and is clearly quite a daydreamer.

This is quite a slow film, pace wise (as already mentioned) and thus some may find it a bit boring, or perhaps even dull, although personally I enjoyed it. This…