"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"

A rather run down Indian hotel for Geriatrics is the main setting for this new film from "Shakespeare In Love" Director John Madden.

We start off in the Uk, witnessing 7 people, all with varying lives, 5 are individual, and two are a married couple. They are all for whatever reason suffering with financial difficulties, and in trying to find a way to get away from it all, they all happen upon The Marigold Hotel. It is pictured as a very glamourous Hotel in the heart of India, when they arrive the fact is very different.

Sonny is a young Indian man who has tasked himself with the job of rebuilding the run down hotel, that belonged to his Father, and have it be the first class hotel that he knows it is capable of, despite no-one in his family believing the same.Naturally their first impressiomns of the hotel are not great, but soon they settle down, and start to see the beauty of the city and of India, and the people.  There is a very mixed bunch of mature residents, there is the ageing lethario, looking for a younger woman, there is the woman after a rich man to make her comfortable in their latter years, a married couple who want a dream house to retire in, but find their relationship may not last the course, a rather racist woman whose tongue knows not when to be tactful, a gay man looking to find answers to a relationship he had many years ago, and a recently widowed woman, looking for a change to her life as her husband has left her with many debts.

It may sound like alot of plot to get through, and all this backstory takes place before we have gotten into the heart of the film, but the genius of Director John Madden and Screenwriter Ol Parker, is that they are able to give all the characters a wonderful and compelling backstory and very efficiently, so that once they arive in India, he can get on with the real storytelling of the film.

The characters are all so wonderfully believable, not because they are so brilliantly written by Ol Parker, but also because we have the very best of British acting talent bringing this characters to life. The cast of the film alone should be enough to get any cinema goer into a screening of this film. 
Some great stories are told, some will reach their conclusion, and some will just be starting.

I cannot praise this film enough, it is such true delight to watch, from start to finish, it is two hours of great storytelling, with a cast to die for. I defy anyone to dislike this movie. It is vibrant, colourful, entertaining, funny and moving.

Films seldom get any better than  this......9 out of 10.