Overview: A warm, light, life-affirming and heart-warming film, very enjoyable to watch. It notes ups, downs and complications in life but overall is very celebratory. A v good summer hol film.
Follow up to the hit film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ (2012).
Plot: It picks up where the first film finished: a group of British retirees staying in an endearing, still-being developed hotel in India and getting a new lease of life.
Comment: In ‘Second Best’ the plot, location and the cast are largely the same, but somewhat developed with new places and characters. One plotline is the ambition to start a second hotel, another the manager’s wedding engagement and a third one resident’s work in cloth-trading.
The owner-manager Dev Patel is very central as a strong, lively character, with Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith in other leading roles.
The mood is more relaxed, disparate than in the first film, with more sumptuous visuals (indicating higher budget). The plot ambles on at a leisurely pace with plenty good scenery and minor incidents to keep you entertained along the way. Altogether, the second film has very much the same relationship to the first as Mamma Mia 2 does to Mamma Mia 1.
With Marigold Hotel 2, it’s starting to move into feeling like a box set or long-running soap opera and potentially the series could go on longer.
As with Mamma Mia 2, it’s largely a light film but it certainly has a message: ‘life can always present new opportunities’. The Brits came out to India simply to have an interesting place to live but discovered that new doors opened for them. To quote one character: ‘It’s never over’ and another: ‘We can have as many lives as we want’.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Best_Exotic_Marigold_Hotel
Star mark: a heart-warming 4 out of 5 7 August 2018, edited for presentation 14 March 2020
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