The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Directed by John Madden
Produced by Graham Broadbent
Peter Czernin
Screenplay by Ol Parker
Based on These Foolish Things by
Deborah Moggach
Starring [clarification needed]
Judi Dench
Bill Nighy
Penelope Wilton
Maggie Smith
Tom Wilkinson
Ronald Pickup
Celia Imrie
Dev Patel
Music by Thomas Newman
Cinematography Ben Davis
Editing by Chris Gill
Studio Participant Media
Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ
Blueprint Pictures
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s)
30 November 2011 (SIIdC)
24 February 2012 (United Kingdom)
Running time 124 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $10 million
Box office $134,388,807
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a 2012 British comedy-drama film, directed by John Madden. The screenplay, written by Ol Parker, was based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things, by Deborah Moggach, and features an ensemble cast consisting of Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Penelope Wilton, as a group of British pensioners moving to a retirement hotel in India, run by the young and eager Sonny, played by Dev Patel. The movie was produced by Participant Media and Blueprint Pictures on a budget of $10 million.

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 24 February 2012 and received critical acclaim; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opened to strong box-office business in the United Kingdom and continued to build worldwide. It became a surprise box-office hit following its international release, eventually grossing $134 million worldwide, mostly from its domestic run. It was ranked among the highest-grossing 2012 releases in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and the highest-grossing specialty releases of the year.

The film was first shown at the Italian cinema trade show Le Giornate Professionali di Cinema ("The Professional Days of Cinema") in Sorrento on November 30, 2011 and at the Glasgow Film Festival on 17 February 2012, before being released widely in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 24 February 2012. This was followed by release in a further 26 countries in March and April.

Box office

In the United Kingdom, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel came in second to The Woman in Black at the box office in its first week, earning £2.2 million. It eventually topped the UK box office with £2.3 million in its second weekend on release. By the end of its UK run, the film had grossed around $31 million. Prior to its United States debut, the comedy had already grossed $69 million worldwide and passed both The Queen (2006) and Calendar Girls (2003) in total international grosses. After three months of release, it was ranked the third highest-grossing 2012 release in Australia and New Zealand behind only The Avengers and The Hunger Games and fourth-highest-grossing 2012 title in the UK.

In the United States, the film initially opened in 16 theaters in its first week. In its second week of release, it expanded from 16 to 178 screens in North America and grossed $2.7 million for the weekend, ending eighth on the week's top hits. By the end of the month, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel had amassed nearly $20 million in the Unites States and crossed $100 million in worldwide gross receipts. As of October 2012, the film has grossed $46,412,041 in North America and $87,976,766 in other territories for a total of $134,388,807. It ranks among the best international grossing film released worldwide by Fox Searchlight Pictures behind Black Swan (2010), The Full Monty (1997), and The Descendants (2011), and among the highest grossing specialty releases of the year along with Moonrise Kingdom and To Rome with Love.

Reception

Dench and Smith both received favorable reviews by critics
The film has received positive reviews by critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 78% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 145 reviews, with an average score of 6.5/10. Its consensus states "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel isn't groundbreaking storytelling, but it's a sweet story about the senior set featuring a top-notch cast of veteran actors." On Metacritic, which uses a normalized rating system, the film holds a 62/100 rating, based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times gave The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel three and a half out of four stars. He declared the film "a charming, funny and heartwarming movie [and] a smoothly crafted entertainment that makes good use of seven superb veterans." Claudia Puig from USA Today called it "a refreshing, mature fairy tale with a top-notch ensemble cast." While she felt the film was "about 15 minutes too long", she summarized it as "a delightful, droll and entertaining comedy of manners with an estimable cast" and an "ideal low-tech alternative to the special-effects laden" film projects of 2012.Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle remarked that the film was "a rare reminder from movies that the grand emotions are not only for the young and the middle-aged", citing it "too well made to be dismissed and contains too much truth to be scorned."

Peter Travers from Rolling Stone rated the comedy three out of four stars. He found that "with a lesser cast, the movie would be a lineup of TV-movie clichés. But this is a cast that never makes a false move even when the script settles for formula." Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips wrote that "as two-hour tours go, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel goes smoothly." While he felt that the film focused on "pleasantly predictable story", he noted that the project was one of those films which "are better off concentrating on a reassuring level of actorly craft [than] going easy on the surprises." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly graded the film with a 'B–' rating, summing it as a "lulling, happy-face story of retirement-age self-renewal, set in a shimmering, weltering, jewel-colored India." She wrote that "as a brand extender (for the senior cast, for the director, and certainly for Patel, following the grand success of Slumdog), Marigold Hotel achieves what it sets out to do: Sell something safe and sweet, in a vivid foreign setting, to an underserved share of the moviegoing market."