Best Exotic Hotel

We just saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and are happy we did. The humor was charming and genuine. We joined the audience in laughing at silly jokes and situations, but it was refreshing compared to the frozen-smile humor of too many current comedies like Bridesmaids, The 5-Year Engagement and The Sitter, movies that rely too much on bodily functions. I’m not suggesting that these movies are bad. Just too raunchy for my taste. It’s the same with tv’s Two-and-a-Half Men, the humor of which is based almost entirely on masturbation, orgasms, flatulence, and defecation. In other words, toilet humor. I’m no prude, but surely there must be other things about the human condition that are funny. Graham tells a really interested Madge that he’s gay. She looks at him, pauses, then, “You don’t mean . . . happy?” Madge asks Norman, “Aren’t you afraid of having sex at your age?” He thinks about it, then replies, “If she dies, she dies.” Norman fears he’ll be unable to perform for his date with Judith. He buys some Viagra at a local apothecary. Judith later tells Madge after a very successful tryst, “I switched his pills to aspirin without him knowing it.” Norman is later seen dancing happily in the shower. Dev Patel (yes, the same as the Dev Patel who starred in Slumdog Millionaire) owns a run-down, dying hotel in Jaipur, India. He builds a website to lure retirees to his hotel, collecting seven disparate men and women from England looking for an economical retirement location. What they find is something less than what was promised. Graham tells his fellows that what he most likes about India is the assault on the senses—the smells, colors, tastes, sounds. And we get all that except for the smells. This is a Disney Land India, more beautiful, friendly, happy, and progressive than it really is. Its poverty and despair are never seen here. But who cares? As Sonny says, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, then it’s not the end.” And who could ever pass up a film with Dame Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Willkinson, and Bill Nighy? The story is simple and predictable, but that doesn’t prevent the audience from feeling good at the closing credits.