Film review: ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens Friday.

By Josh Bell

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 | 5:51 p.m.

It takes a good 25 minutes for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to get to its title location, and that’s indicative of the languid pacing of this sleepy movie, which casts a bunch of venerable British actors (including Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith) as harmless old codgers who decide to live out their twilight years at a cut-rate retirement home in India. Run by a young manager (Dev Patel) with more enthusiasm than skill, the Marigold Hotel is billed as a haven of old-fashioned British gentility in a foreign country, but it’s not the luxurious oasis the brochures promise. As the residents adjust to their new home, they learn simple life lessons and form new friendships, all laid out in pleasant but entirely dull fashion. The actors bring some verve and wit to their characters, but the movie has all the liveliness of a retiree taking an afternoon nap.