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The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Review

By Bryan Weatherall | February 22, 2015

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a sequel to the the very popular 2011 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and returns with the same director from the original film, John Madden, as well as a quite a lot of the original cast and few new additions. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel stars Maggie Smith, Richard Gere, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Lillete Dubey, Tina Desai, Judi Dench and Tamsin Greig.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer

In this film we follow the story of Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel) and his struggles as an operator of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The hotel has reached full capacity and needs to expand to a new location to grow. But it proves difficult to do for Sonny, with many things to be done before it can happen and Sonny must also prepare for his marriage with the love of his life, Sunaina (Tena Desae). Guests of the hotel are also trying to get on with their lives as we watch Douglas Ainslie (Bill Nighy) and Evelyn Greenslade (Judi Dench) try to get into a relationship, while Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith) goes through her own health issues. At the same time all guests and Sonny are left wondering, who is the mysterious man called Guy (Richard Gere) and what his agenda at the hotel is?

This movie really was a lot of fun, I went and watched the first film after seeing this as I hadn’t seen it before and while I do like the first film as well, I would say that I had more fun with The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. To me it seemed a lot more funnier with more jokes to hear and see as well a lighter tone than the first. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel also has a good overall message about life and is a fairly well done sequel to the first film. In the cinema I was in people were laughing quite a lot at the jokes and that’s always a good sign that people enjoyed it.

All the guests of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Dev Patel who plays Sonny, the hotel manager with a dream to expand his Exotic Marigold Hotel into a chain hotels across India, is joy to watch on screen. I thought his performance was so fun and entertaining that I just had to see what he was like in the first film when I got home. In this one I enjoyed all of his entertaining quips and the lemmings joke he made about the hotel guests was particularly funny. I know Dev Patel from watching a him perform in The Newsroom and he was very good in there and he’s great in this film, hopefully there are a lot more film roles for him in the future.

Lillete Dubey and Richard Gere in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Richard Gere who is new to the hotel makes an appearance early on in the film and I’m happy to say he isn’t just in the film for a little bit and then not seen again. While he’s not the main character, he does have a lot of scenes and they were all in good fun, with many of them being quite funny. Maggie Smith who plays Muriel also brings a lot of laughs particularly with her tea comments early on in the film, but also as a central character Muriel is interesting and her character shares a lot more about herself in this sequel than in the original film, which was interesting to see. Both Judi Dench and Bill Nighy are great as well and in fact all actors were good fun to watch, they are old enough now that I guess acting in a film is fairly routine for them, but I enjoyed how everyone was.

Richard Gere and Dev Patel in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

In terms of the directing from John Madden who handled both of the films, it’s pretty much the same as it was in the first. However the tone of this second film is a bit more lighthearted, more funny and a bit more fun than the first. I found when I watched the first one that things seemed a bit slower and there were a lot more sad moments throughout it, however this second film is not without its own sad moments as well. The overall message about living life at the end of this film is positive and I like when a film comes with a nice message at the end of it.

The music in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is good, there’s a mix between new modern music and a lot of Indian music. There is a lot of emphasis in this one with regards to Dev Patel’s character learning to dance to some songs for his wedding which is fun to watch. Being set in India there is also a strong use of bright vibrant colours and in many scenes the colour really pops out everywhere, strangely the Exotic Marigold Hotel isn’t that colourful (with the walls all brown, white or grey), but a lot of other things are (especially the characters).

Maggie Smith in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Overall The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a solid sequel to the original film. All the cast are very entertaining to watch and the films lighter tone allows it to be much more funny than the first one. Richard Gere, Dev Patel and Maggie Smith deliver some great performances and jokes here and there. While sequels usually are much worse than the original film, this one was good fun to watch and leaves the audience with a nice message about life and living it by the end. John Madden put together a fairly well made and entertaining sequel with The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.