Review of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) by Laura H — 22 Jul 2015

The sequel fails in pretty much every way for me. The original isn't a great movie or anything, but it had a small scale story it wanted to tell. It's weird, but this movie feels like what happens sometimes with other sequels to huge movies that merely want to "cash in" on the success of the first and want to scalp as much from audiences' love of the original for the sequel.

Which is ridiculous because of course the original wasn't some huge moneymaker, in fact I'm surprised it was able to support the making of a sequel in the first place. I guess there's just so few movies for older audiences with main characters their age that its a niche that could pay for itself.

The movie feels so haphazard, even more loosely joined together than the original movie's vignette structure. Not all of the little stories of the original held my same level of interest, but there's very little in the sequel I found interesting, even with the characters' stories I liked the most from the original.

The impending marriage difficulties storyline was pretty terrible, as was the story of Norman and Carol or the story of Madge. I liked what they did with Judi Dench and Bill Nighy's characters in the original, but here they are totally wasted.

Richard Gere helps to bring in a little fresh air, but his story ends up as inconsequential as most of the rest. Maggie Smith is pretty much the only one to hold my interest in this movie, and even her stuff isn't that great, luckily she's a national treasure.

So basically, I guess I'm saying the script just sucked, and needed a page one rewrite.