In Time ☆☆

In Time is the story of a future where humans are genetically engineered to stop ageing at 25, whereupon the year on their 'arm-clock' starts to count down. Time is now quite literally money, and the rich get to live forever while the poor struggle each day to earn/gamble/fight their way to gain an extra day. One such man in the ghetto is Justin Timberlake who, after being granted one hundred years by a wealthy man sick of living, is pursued for the 'theft' into the wealthy district of New Greenwich where he meets heiress Amanda Seyfried. After being cornered Timberlake decides to take Seyfried as a hostage, who later becomes a willing accomplice to his mission to give people more time, and they spend the rest of the film being hunted by the time police and others who do not want the balance to be upset.

Despite being an interesting concept, In Time fails on a number of counts. At first it appears to be trying to create the sinister future seen in Equilibrium, with the action and partnership present in the Bourne Identity. What it fails to achieve is the intense personal connection between the male and female leads that Matt Damon and Franke Potente exude in Bourne, while the future appears to be bleak but utterly unbelievable - whereas part of me whilst watching Equilibrium felt 'well it might happen'.

Though Timberlake is a capable actor and Seyfried has shown her worth a number of times, they fail at the attempt to become a futuristic Bonnie and Clyde.

Equally the rebellious rich girl kidnapped by handsome stranger has also been done much better in films such as Danny Boyle's A Life Less Ordinary.

The dialogue is clumsy. Seyfried exclaims while Timberlake is driving backwards (fairly capably) "do you even know how to drive?!" ummm, yes love, he's been driving for a good ten minutes now. Also their conversations seem to be made up of statements by Timberlake and Seyfried throwing questions at them.

The characters are flimsy at best. Alex Pettyfer does a rather good impression of an English gangster, however this isn't a Guy Ritchie film and the accent nor the character have a place here, only serving to show that people will continue to be awful in the future and English people will always crop up as the bad guy no matter how unlikely it is for a Brit to be in a futuristic USA that seems to keep within its own borders.

Cillian Murphy has the role of 'time-cop' who seems to be a jobsworth beyond belief, risking his own life to stop rules being broken. Murphy does not grab your attention on screen and the character he is given is laboured with terrible dialogue (as the rest of the cast are) so that even as a bad guy he becomes almost funny.

Vincent Kartheiser channels his Mad Men character by being equal parts appalling human being and completely incompetent when it comes to women. He is the father of Seyfried and a millionaire many times over, controlling the economy and keeping the poor desperate and the rich safe in their mansions. Basically Andrew Niccol (writer/director) had a list of characteristics of the typical baddy and forced them all on Kartheiser.

As for Seyfried and Timberlake, well, lets just say that the haircuts say it all. Seyfried sports a do that screams THIS IS SCI-FI while Timberlake's shaven head is reminiscent of the Jason Statham look, except that he cannot pull off the quips or the stunts with as much pizazz as our resident hard-man. As for the quips, like the rest of dialogue they feel stilted and pushed in where the film really did not require any comedy for it to work. Niccol obviously disagreed and puts in awkward moments that are meant to be funny but halfway through smiling you start to wonder if its because it is a genuinely funny moment OR you are just feeling embarrassed.

Another haircut related issue I had was that Seyfried does not change her hair once - OK yes you stop ageing at 25 but does this mean you are a vampire who also stops growing their hair? It could have done with the gritty edge behind the Potente/Damon relationship in Bourne that they have to change her hair to be able to survive. Instead Seyfried spends the entire movie with one haircut and impeccable make-up. Even Bonnie and Clyde looked a little roughed up sometimes.

This film failed to satisfy me as a Sci-Fi fan. It had all the components of being a genre pusher - the idea of time actually being money? kinda genius. The execution however was just pants. And that is my professional opinion as an amateur blogger: In Time = MASSIVE PANTS.

The script was weak, the direction marginally stronger and the acting laboured. This is such a shame because Niccol is responsible for the fabulous Gattaca, a strong futuristic film with a great cast of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, and wrote The Truman Show which is perhaps one of the best Big Brother type films in existence.

Not sure I can recommend this film, if you think you might like it be my guest but I'd rather you watched Gattaca, Logan's Run, or Equilibrium. In fact, definitely watch Equilibrium before you even consider In Time.

Bachelorette ☆☆½

Hollywoodland, in all their wisdom, have got a system whereby they release a film before it is even out in theatres to iTunes (US only) for a limited period. So that is how I managed to watch Bachelorette about three weeks before its release thanks to a friend who is both American and has a US iTunes account.

Bachelorette is set the night before the wedding of Becky, the 'larger' member of the B-Faces from High School which consisted of three others who are to be her bridesmaids: Kirsten Dunst's waspish Regan; Lizzy Caplan's confused Jenna; and Isla Fisher's sweet but dumb Katie.

These three supposed best friends of the bride are determined to have some fun, even though the bride has said that a quiet night is what is needed because of her relations coming from out of town. Jenna and Katie instead snort the coke that Jenna has smuggled with her on the plane (in a talcum powder bottle - heads up airport security checks from now on won't let you have liquid or talc) and proceed to ruin the speeches at the rehearsal dinner by 'outing' Becky's high school bulimia and being so wasted that all they do is say they have lost their phone.

Later at the champagne party (which was arranged instead of a full on bachelorette) a stripper that Katie knows turns up to make the party a bit more lively. However the stripper calls Becky pig-face (as she was called in High School by everyone, even her bridesmaids) which, understandably, makes the bride question the motives behind hiring the stripper.

So everyone is kicked out, and Regan, Jenna and Katie are left snorting coke and drinking heavily. This results in a torn wedding stress, a mad race across New York to get it fixed, reunited lovers, startling revelations about previous trauma, vomit, overdoses, sex in bathrooms, strippers, more drugs, and finally a wedding.

To me, this film is a poor relation to Bridesmaids. In reality I think if it had come out maybe next year it would have stood a better chance at not being compared because they are actually very different stories. Where Bridesmaids was a clever and empowering film about a woman struggling with the changing life of her best friend, Bachelorette is a tale of three women trying to accept that the least pretty and fat one of the group has her life together and is getting married first.

Something that really bothers me about the film is that it never quite works out what type of film it is trying to be. Unlike Bridesmaids (and I promise, its the final comparison), it does not settle on a single genre - almost like it is trying so hard NOT to be a romantic comedy that the humour gets beyond tasteless (in my own opinion) and fails to keep you engaged with any one character. This I think is due to the helm being taken by first time director Leslye Headland, who also wrote the script. Normally such a combination means the direction is tighter and the story lines less likely to run away or be unresolved, not so much here.

There are moments which are undeniably very funny and I did laugh out loud a few times, however there were more times when I was cringing beyond my normal threshold (I cannot deal with humour like The Office because I spend the majority of the time feeling embarrassed) or trying to work out what was going to happen next and where the story was actually going.

The acting - you know I can't really fault it, the characters being depicted were sometimes awful, sometimes sweet, but the actors didn't exactly fail the writing or direction. I love Lizzy Caplan and had such high hopes that the relationship that was being conjured between herself and Adam Scott would be similar to the one they had in Party Down but it veered between being too shocking to being too cheesy (for my taste). But that is not the fault of the actors it is the script and the direction they were given.

Kirsten Dunst is a brilliant wasp I have to say, I found her reactions to what was going on around her mostly believable, and its quite fun to see her being such a bitch. James Marsden is the male version of Dunst in this film and I just found it uncomfortable - the short relationship that crops up could have been so much better had the language been less forced and their characters just an iota more likeable. Instead I was fairly bored that they ended up together in certain scenes and could have done without that, instead I wanted more time given to the Scott/Caplan relationship so that didn't seem quite so rushed.

Isla Fisher (aka Mrs Baron-Cohen) does ditzy and doped up really well, but again unfortunately her character becomes more like a caricature, getting so wasted that she needs looking after before the party has even begun. There are also dark undertones to her state of mind which are never fully explored but are really quite disturbing, as are revealed in her time with Joe, the guy from school who used to sell her pot but has been in love with her from afar since he was a teenager.

What the film appeared to be going for was brutal realism mixed with comedy - and that just doesn't sit well together. The almost blasé attitude toward drug taking was itself fairly offensive, but then perhaps that is just my British sensibilities not recognising the ease of drug taking in cities like New York. I was also disturbed at how little the friends actually supported the bride to be, and yes I understood the reasoning being that there was jealousy that the fat girl got the happy ending first but really - the lack of respect from the beginning just made me question how and why a friendship would last so long.

I did enjoy parts of the film, and like I said the awful characterisation was not the fault of the actors but the writer/director. I just wish it had chosen a genre and stuck to it - if you want to be dark go pitch black, comedy can take it, just watch Death at a Funeral (the original British one) for proof. Equally if you want romance to get mixed in there somewhere then BE a romantic comedy - you can do drugs and still be sweet and funny, if you get the balance right.

Alas, Bachelorette fails to decide what it is, and to me that really isn't good enough when you have such a wealth of comedic and dramatic talent at your fingertips.

Friends With Kids ☆☆☆½

This film is a real treat. ENTIRELY predictable but much like Friends With Benefits it is done so well that you don't mind that the lives, loves and relationships are following a plot as old as time...well OK so the beginning isn't so conventional but by the end it gets there.

The plot follows a group of friends living in Manhattan: a (I presumed) married couple played by Maya Rudolph (Away We Go) and Chris O'Dowd (IT Crowd); another (completely all over each other) couple played by Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm (Bridesmaids), and finally best friends Adam Scott (from the AMAZING series Party Down) and Jennifer Westfeldt, the writer and director of this movie (and partner of Mr Hamm).

It begins in a restaurant where Rudolph and O'Dowd, after their single friends complain about a small person making noise and the terrible parents for bringing a child into a fancy restaurant, announce they are expecting. Cut to four years later, their friends live in Brooklyn, and Westfeldt and Scott have to take $50 cab rides to get to their houses because dinner does not happen in restaurants but at peoples homes where they can keep an eye on the kids.
Hamm and Wiig have become this bitter couple who snipe at each other where they used to never stop kissing, most likely due to the lack of sleep from their newborn. Basically, they aren't happy at all.

O'Dowd and Rudolph are entirely stressed, not sniping but yelling at each other, but then they also have not slept and are expecting their second child. All in all what Westfeldt and Scott see are two stressed out couples trying to raise children and decide, after a lot of discussion of the pros and cons of raising a child as friends, to have a baby of their own without being a couple, splitting the responsibility down the middle.

Quite refreshingly this film goes from the conception (an awkward but weirdly lovely 'drunk' night of sex) to the birth, and then follows on nicely with Scott and Westfeldt making their lives work. Until Scott meets a young dancer played by Megan Fox (Transformers) and Westfeldt meets a divorcee with kids of his own, played by Edward Burns (27 Dresses).

The relationships move and evolve, their friends have huge arguments and break-up, and the situation that Scott and Westfeldt in moves from happy to miserable. Don't worry though, as I said at the start, entirely predictable to the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film despite the predictable nature of the story, but then sometimes a story told well is good enough. [This is my main complaint with films such as Avatar: I find it mundane because the story, though accompanied by some beautiful graphics, is a classic tale of lovers from different sides of the track, but it is lost among the self-congratulatory special effects and unimaginative quest for 'unobtanium'.]

The cast are fantastic: Wiig and Hamm are scarily believable as the couple who's relationship becomes so sour it could curdle milk; Rudolph and O'Dowd are lovely, also believable as the couple who fight but love each other enough to get through it, and O'Dowd has a fairly impressive New York accent (at least that was the drawl it reminded me of most).

Adam Scott - I have been slightly in love with his strange face since I became addicted to the short-lived series Party Down (though IMDB is teasing me with a film version being in 'pre-production'). He displays a more sensitive side with his portrayal of Jason in this movie which is really sweet and makes your heart melt just a little, even if the language accompanying the tender moment is not quite what the traditional romantic comedy normally would use.
The language is of course due to Jennifer Westfeldt who does a really good job with the script and direction. She has quite a sharp wit and makes use of colourful language but not in a perverse way, as in it is not used to shock the viewer, it is simply just the way we talk now. This is also Westfeldt's first turn in the directors chair and I have to say I can't really fault the direction, it is held together really well and does not dwell on one couple at the expense of the others.

What is important about this film is the believability of it. I can imagine that people who are in their mid to late thirties consider having children with their friends if not in relationships themselves, and perhaps it could work. Of course the overriding romance of this story is that the best friends are actually in love with one another, and the romantic in me adores this. The realist says that if this were to happen in real life it would most likely end in disaster no matter the romantic notion that just loving and wanting the child is enough to make such an arrangement work.


Nevertheless, this is a story about family well-told by all, from the writer to the cast. It is sweet, funny, and boasts some realism. It is interesting that Westfeldt has no children of her own to be able to write so well about the stresses of child-rearing, but perhaps she has observed enough from her own friends to be able to comment. You might be wondering why I only gave it three and a half stars and that is because though I enjoyed it greatly, I cannot rank it as highly as I have The Five Year Engagement.

Above-all, this film is a romance. And I'm a sucker for a well-told romance with some kind of happy ending.

We Bought A Zoo ☆☆☆

Now, this film says it is based on the true story of British journalist Benjamin Mee who bought a failing zoo on Dartmoor. I would call it loosely based - or perhaps even just inspired, as further research into the story showed how many differences director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) orchestrated in the movie version.

The real story of course takes place in Devon (South West of England for those who don't know, and one of the rainiest places in Britain) where journalist Mee convinced his Mother to sell his childhood home in Surrey to buy a failing zoo on Dartmoor, along with Mee convincing his wife to sell up and leave their barn conversion in Southern France to move back to rainy old UK. His wife, Katherine, had battled a brain tumour which, less than a year into their move to the zoo came back and she passed away soon after. Mee states that the reason behind the move to the zoo, despite his wife's protests, was that they knew the tumour could come back at any time and if he was to be a single father he wanted a place that was magical for his children to grow up (actually at the end of the article I read his daughter is running along in a red cape beside the wolf enclosure - how much more of a fairytale can you get?).

So the true story is Mee and family along with his Mother and one of his brothers live on Dartmoor and struggle to resurrect a failed zoo. The Crowe version has a bereaved Mee and children move to struggling Rosemoor zoo and work to bring it up to regulation before the summer season begins in decidedly sunny California.

Unfortunately for Cameron Crowe he seems to have a pattern when it comes to film making. Firstly the script must be doused in syrup before being read, a major change (preferably death) has to happen to the main characters, a quirky girl must be the lifeboat for the male hero, and if possible there must be the cutest kid in the world on screen making impossibly adorable comments. Crowe's filmography includes Jerry Maguire (Jonathan Lipnicki the cute-as-a-button child), Elizabethtown (Kirsten Dunst rescues Orlando Bloom), and Almost Famous (probably the least cliched but still pretty saccharine for a rocker movie).

In WBAZ the protagonist is Matt Damon who was an adrenaline junkie journalist and recent single parent to a moody and talented artistic fourteen year old boy, and an adorable seven year old who, much like Lipnicki in Jerry Maguire, is wise beyond her years. Maggie Elizabeth Jones who plays Rosie Mee is so friggin cute, and has been given some corker lines. Actually without her I may have been tempted to give this film two stars rather than three. Though obviously her presence ramps up the sugar content sometimes this is forgiveable, what wasn't was the relationship between Dylan Mee and zoo-helper Lily.

Though Colin Ford (who plays young Sam in Supernatural) does well as the angry teenager who is in torment about the death of his mother, Lily (played by Elle Fanning of Super 8) is fairly off putting as enthusiastic zoo worker who is home schooled and quite obviously hasn't been in much contact with other teenagers. Nothing against Fanning's acting abilities, I'm positive she fulfilled the directors wants and needs for her character, its more I dislike the way Crowe has to have EVERYONE falling in love.

Damon looks older than ever in this movie, which is appropriate given he is meant to be a single father who is putting off grief to try and give his children a magical life sans a mother (and he is 42 now so allowed to look it). Damon and Jones together can be heartbreaking at times, but then Crowe will ruin the moment with sweeping music to entirely put you off. However left well alone is the relationship between Damon and Thomas Haden Church (Sideways). Church is the older brother who is trying to move Damon on from his stagnant phase, providing comic relief with snappy witticisms to cut through the sugar. Church is often given this role as his deadpan delivery means you tend to smile or chuckle even if the line isn't that funny.

As for the zoo employees of course there is 'leading lady' Scarlett Johansson who is the prerequisite love interest for Damon, playing Kelly the zoo-keeper. I like Johansson a lot as an actress and she can often make a bad film mediocre, or a mediocre film worth watching, just by facial expression or line delivery. Unfortunately again Crowe manages to ruin some nice moments between Damon and Johansson with overplay of Sigur Ros and other orchestral music.

Of the rest of the zoo-crew there is a Scotsman called MacCready who has an enemy in the form of zoo inspector Ferris (played as a caricature by John Michael Higgins); Patrick Fugit (Almost Famous) is, as far as I could tell, a walking monkey-holder (and the most interesting thing the monkey did was face-palm once), and a plethora of other 'actors' who seemed to just mill around putting posts in and collecting escaped snakes.

The plot follows the renovation of the zoo into a working and profitable park that will support the Mee family for the rest of their lives. It couldn't be more predictable if it tried, and that is a comment I made before realising it was a true story. Crowe seems to have had a checklist of cliches sat beside him whilst making this film and he seems to have fulfilled every single one.

And yet, despite the cliches I still gave this film three stars. That is purely down to Matt Damon's likeability on screen, his relationship with the adorable Maggie Elizabeth Jones, and that none of the acting can really be criticised for being bad. It was never the actors fault that the film was a series of cliches or the characters so exaggerated, they at least seemed to have a lot of fun with their roles.

If I could have picked any other director to handle this story it would have been Danny Boyle. Why? Have you ever seen Millions? It is adorable, it is family centric, and it is above all Eccentric which is what was really missing from WBAZ. The story is weird - who on earth buys a failing zoo? Crowe is missing that eccentricity to his film making to have been able to tackle this film appropriately.

As it is though, it is worth a watch if you happen across it. I would never have gone out of my way to see it, I was lucky to have been lent it by a friend, but that doesn't mean there are others out there who will have found a lot more enjoyment from this film than I did.
It was a British story that needed to be told by Britain not Hollywood. Who on earth believes that California could possibly have a wetter summer than the South West of England?!

Children's animation - do we expect too much?

A ‘conversation’ I had on Twitter today with the Reviews editor Nick de Semylen  at Empire Magazine got me to thinking about grown ups’ expectations of kids movies. Basically it started with me reading the review of Brave at empireonline.com and being halted by a sentence disparaging Pixar saying “Monsters Inc is not half as funny as it thinks it is” to which I reacted with “SAY WHAT?”

This led to me tweeting to Empire with “I’m sorry - Monsters Inc is not half as funny as it thinks it is? please tell me this isn't a consensus across Empire”, Nick replying with “it’s not” which I totally misunderstood, thought he was agreeing that Monsters Inc was pretentious so I sent a slightly passive aggressive tweet back – to which Nick kindly corrected my understanding as in fact he loves Monsters Inc and does not agree with the latest reviewers interpretation of the film.

Apart from totally embarrassing myself, this dialogue with the Empire editor got me thinking – are the expectations of adults too much for the modern children’s animation?

(I apologise for sounding like Carrie from Sex and the City just then)

Now Monsters Inc did get a little criticism from some when it first came out for being too young, reflected in the main human being a two year old cute-as-a-button girl. I would totally agree that Monsters Inc was meant for the five year olds, but this does not mean that an adult could not enjoy it or find it funny. The grown-up can watch Sully’s fur quiver in the snow and be amazed at the beauty of it, can laugh at the jokes about yellow snow and the tedium of office work. In short, though not quite the fully rounded support cast of Toy Story, there are two huge monsters to fall in love with and a little girl that will break your heart and that is enough for five stars in my book.

The pressure that has been put upon children’s films to be as much for the adult as for the child came, I believe, in 1995 when Toy Story first hit the cinemas. Blending humour, film parody, and sentiment with stunning animation John Lasseter brought a game changer to Disney and our screens. From this point we demanded more from our children’s films – these were no longer opportunities to take a nap for an hour while the kids were glued to the latest talking animal flick, grown-up’s were willing to pay to see this film WITHOUT a child in-tow.

Pixar followed up with A Bugs Life, a film I loved but it wasn’t quite Toy Story. Then came Monsters Inc in 2001 and once again our minds were blown. Yes it was more on the level of A Bugs Life with who it was aimed at, squarely at the younger audience, but the animation was breathtaking and the action sequences seamless. It tapped into every parent’s worst nightmares and appealed to every child’s imagination, even those children who were in their forties (I count my Mum here).

That same year came a film that, it could be argued, was aimed at the adult rather than the child. That was Shrek. I loved Shrek, it was farcical and funny, rude and made references to many more adult concerns than any of the previous Pixar movies put together. Shrek was a Dreamworks creation whose previous computer animated effort was Antz, one of the worst animations I have seen with a Woody Allen voiced ant and a gory storyline of death – Disney Pixar were always more clever with their bug movie to make it cute, even the death of evil Hopper at the end came at the mouths of the most adorable looking chicks I have ever seen animated.

Shrek managed to be funny and charming, and teach children (and adults) that appearance means nothing – you can look like an ogre but have the personality of a prince. Though a slightly laboured message by the end of the fourth movie (in my opinion Dreamworks should have left it at 2) Shrek managed to start a franchise that was funny and moving, and gross in the way you know a Pixar movie would never be.

So 2001 was a pretty great year for animation, and our expectations could not have been higher.

Disney/Pixar followed up Monsters Inc with Finding Nemo in 2003 (Toy Story 2 came out in 1999 would you believe) and by far this is my favourite of the Pixar movies. A fish with short term memory loss, a paranoid father who cannot tell jokes (even though he’s a clownfish), vegetarian sharks and a tank of slightly mad tropical fish obsessed with dentistry – sheer genius.

It is not surprising that Pixar and all other children’s movie makers have had such a tough time living up to not only their competition but their own reputations. Shrek 2 was brilliant, Shrek 3 and 4 should have never been given the green light. I’m one of those rare people who disliked the Incredibles, Cars was almost worthy of being made but in no way was a sequel deserved, Ratatouille was gorgeous but slightly too long for children or adults.

Then came WALL-E in 2008 and the world was once again hooked on Pixar and its ability to transcend the lines between child and adult. For the first 30minutes of the film man woman and child were absorbed by this crazy, lonely robot finding treasures in the wasteland of Earth. Of course the film was a huge comment on the environment and our impact upon it, but that didn’t matter to the small people and if it mattered to the big people, well, they didn’t have to watch it did they?

This was swiftly followed in 2009 by possibly the most heartbreaking of all the Pixar films, UP. Honestly if you don’t cry when you watch the first 15 minutes of that film you have no heart and it would be best if you and I go our separate ways.

 UP moved easily between the heartbreak that would mean so much to the adults at the beginning, to the crazy and colourful world of South America that the children would respond to, especially the talking dogs. Ok so the grown-ups responded pretty well to the talking dogs as well.

Dreamworks have had their successes too. Apart from Shrek 1&2 they have triumphed with a martial arts bear (Kung Fu Panda 1&2), and Madagascar 1&2 – although I put that success mostly down to the amazing Penguins. Likewise Universal’s animated effort, Despicable Me, had huge success because it blended the cute (small orphan obsessed with unicorns) with the crazy (minions who are small, yellow, speak in their own language, and are obsessed with bananas).

And this is what we expect from our children’s movies. It has to be cute, it has to be intelligent, it cannot talk down to our children but it cannot ignore them completely in an effort to please the grown-ups. Films that have failed to cross that boundary of childish to child-friendly have failed to set the box office alight.

Luckily for Pixar their latest offering has pleased critics across the board. Brave is a Scottish set, female empowered movie with breathtaking animation (from what I’ve seen from the trailer) that by all means is meaningful and funny to all ages. Introducing the world to the beauty of Scotland and the joy of the Scottish accent I cannot wait to see it.

Pixar and John Lasseter forced the world of children’s movies to step up, and I for one am glad they did. Children should not be treated like idiots and their parents should not be forced to watch mediocre films at extortionate prices. However critics need to remember that first and foremost these films are for children, although they may not make the grown-ups laugh constantly I’d bet any small person would be delighted with the offering on screen. So don’t be so mean to Monsters Inc film critics, it is DELIGHTFUL.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ☆☆☆☆☆

This charming film was released last year and stars the best of British: Maggie Smith (Harry Potter), Judi Dench (James Bond), Bill Nighy (Love Actually), Celia Imrie (Dinnerladies), Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins), Penelope Wilton (The Borrowers) and Ronald Pickup (Prince of Persia).

Directed by John Madden, perhaps best known for Shakespeare in Love and Mrs Brown (both starring Judi Dench), this feel good movie is set in Jaipur in India where a group of pensioners have decided to live out their golden years in 'luxury and comfort' in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel run by the enthusiastic but ever so slightly incompetent Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire).

Dench is a widower who has had to sell her flat after it was revealed her husband had put them into hundreds of thousands worth of debt so decides to move to India instead of having to be a burden on her son; Nighy and Wilton a couple who, after investing in their daughter's internet enterprise, have almost no money left; Imrie a grandmother who is looking for her next husband; Pickup an old romantic looking for one final fling before he goes; Wilkinson a judge who has had enough and wants to move back to India and look for a mysterious someone from his past; and finally Smith is a racist old bat who lives alone and needs a hip replacement so, to get one quicker than she would in Britain, she is sent to India armed with Hobnobs and pickle.

The film follows the experiences of these folks in India, how some embrace and fall for the culture and the others resist to the point of becoming quite hideous human beings - and remarkably I do not count Maggie Smith's character in this latter camp. Secrets are revealed and romances are forged showing that age need not matter when love and sex are involved!
Thankfully you do not see any sex, its just referred to quite frequently, especially when Pickup's character is on screen!

What I really loved about this film was that the story was so simple but absolutely everyone acted their hearts out. These films and characters are cake-walks for most of the actors but they weren't lazy, they created people to root for, those to cry over, and personalities you absolutely wish you could encounter just once in your life.
My particular favourites were Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson's characters who become great friends whilst in India, confidantes in their woes, but also something of a teacher/pupil relationship where Wilkinson helps Dench to settle in to India and Dench helps Wilkinson to find what he is looking for.

Of course all the characters are brilliant, Smith is so unashamedly racist it makes you want to punch her - yes, actually punch an old lady who gets around in a wheelchair. Nighy and Wilton have such an uneven relationship that if the husband was not so relaxed he would have left his spiteful wife many years ago, in fact Wilton's performance made me uncomfortable at times because I remember her so fondly as Homily in The Borrowers!
Imrie and Pickup are terrific as the ones unwilling to let go of their youth, determined to seduce and win another partner in life no matter how many wrinkles they have.

Every single character is suffering in some way, even the ever bright and cheerful Sonny played by the wonderful Dev Patel. One of the original Skins graduates Patel radiates warmth as Sonny, but is being restricted by the demands of his mother and her traditions who refuses to let him marry his love, a university graduate who works in a call centre. He also gets some brilliant lines such as "there are so many countries who do not care about their old people that we can capitalise on this!" May not be exact wording but you get the jist, and its very true.

We do not have a culture of care when it comes to old age in this country, we do look to ship our parents to old folks homes rather than take care of them ourselves. Equally we are all living longer with less money so if a 'Best Exotic' comes up in my parents future old age I think they would be very tempted to move across to India and live their last years in vibrancy and getting to eat continuous curry.

The film was incredibly beautiful, not shying away from the poverty but also not dwelling on it. It was the most authentic representation of India according to my parents who have actually been where it was filmed. The ending was reminiscent of John Madden's Oscar winner Shakespeare In Love, with one character grouping them together to explain how it will all end, and I'm pleased to say it was on a reasonably positive note!

Theres not much more I can say without spoiling details of the plot. I'll just leave off with if you feel like you need a film that tugs gently at your heart strings, offers beautiful scenery, and displays absolutely the cream of British acting talent you will not find a better film than this one. Truly deserving of Five Stars.