Hope For the Summer Movie Season: "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" is a Surprise Hit

At this blog we're fond of remembering when summertime meant interesting movies. Back in the p.b. days (pre-blockbuster) you could enter your local four-plex and see The Candidate, The Bad News Bears, Chinatown, and of course, the one that started it all--Jaws. Nowadays summer releases have explosions, superheroes, car chases, assassins...just about everything except plot and characterizaton. So imagine everyone's surprise when a film about British pensioners living in India becomes a smash hit.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has grossed over $100 million internationally. In the U.S., it has been in the top 10 releases for more than three weeks--playing in under 400 screens. It's per-screen average keeps picking up, and word-of-mouth is turning this little comedy into a juggernaut.

Of course, the film's pedigree is exceptional. Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), and Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey)  star as a group of retired Brits who decide to stretch their pensions by moving to a newly-renovated hotel in India. Once they get there, they find that the travel brochures have stretched the truth: the hotel is closer to a hovel. But, stiff upper lips and all, they make a go of it, and discover love in the process.

Director John Madden previously helmed the Oscar-winner Shakespeare In Love, for which Dench won her supporting Oscar.  The film is garnering strong word-of-mouth: the perfect film for those of us over 40 looking for something besides Snow White, Ironman, and the rest of them.