2011. Dir: John Madden. Starring: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith. ●●●○○
I can highly recommend watching the trailer for John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, it's a delightful piece of advertising with a distinctive palette, easily definable characters and the odd laugh out loud line delivery. Unfortunately I cannot recommend the movie as a whole which somehow drags that trailer over two hours without further developing the characters, providing tension or even giving the audience many more laughs.
In the pre-credits sequences we are introduced to the great and good of British acting talent through a series of short vignettes designed to develop an understanding of back-story and hint at the personalities. There's everything from Judi Dench as the resilient widow to Tom Wilkinson's down-to-earth judge stopping off at Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton as a bickering pair of retirees choosing how to spend their later years with reduced incomes. One by one they are seduced by the tempting offer of the best exotic marigold hotel, a palce converted into a residential home for senior citizens looking for adventure and not quite requiring care.
As our dysfunctional septet make their journey to Jaipur, mixing for the first time on the plane out you rather hope their stories will intertwine, however oddly right until the end it feels like separate tales. Even as one pair find a common cause whilst another share the beginnings of an illicit romance there's never a feeling of cohesion within the group. Each day the characters go off alone to face or hide away from the world, each night they return to the culinary challenges placed on them by the hotel's love starved owner Dev Patel.
This literary convention of presenting a collection of characters all of whom must have an arc in which to travel probably works very well in Deborah Moggach's novel but I find it irritating beyond belief. In two hours it's simply too much to ask from an audience to make them care about so many personalities, so their storylines either feel irrelevant or hopelessly shortened. It's not helped by most of cast who seem content to take the money and run. Judi Dench reprises her "As Time Goes By" performance only with less one liners, whilst Tom Wilkinson reveals a secret he's kept hidden, tearing away at his soul for over 30 years, with all the gravitas of someone admitting to eating marmite with a spoon.
Maggie Smith does the best she can with an underwritten role, effectively playing a threatened working class racist bigot at the beginning and a entrepreneur with purpose at the end; it's not her fault that the scene where she undergo's her transformation makes no sense. Does she really embrace Indian culture just because an untouchable lets her rant about her life in service? By the way how old is she?
Only Celia Imrie as a glamorous granny looking for husband number 4 and Dev's over the tops pride inject any life into the film, and the scene they share just past the halfway mark is a moment of delightful farce. And no, I'm not going to tell you what happens, other than it involves a chain of misunderstanding starting with the wrong people getting in bed together.
I suppose one of the reasons that scene shines is because there were laughs to be had that hadn't already been shown in the trailer. Make no mistakes this isn't a comedy, it's a series of life lessons with comedic elements, and I rather believe that amping up the comedy may have helped the film. There were moments in the trailer that made me chortle out loud, but stretched out across the running time it felt awfully thin, just the odd joke at the expense of the more extreme characters surrounded by the self-satisfied blog posts of Judi's silver surfer. When she tapped out "With so many old people together it was inevitable one of us would die..." I nearly screamed at the screen in disgust. The average age of the 7 actors is barely 65 and none of them - bar Maggie Smith and her plot developing broken hip - look remotely like age is slowing them down, even the character that does die simply slips away during an afternoon slumber once their storyline has been resolved. It's nothing like the pain and torment and inherent boredom most of us will experience in old age.
There's not even much given to the Indian actors either. Sure Patel along with his girlfriend and mother, played by Tena Desae and Lillete Dubey respectively, have a soap opera level storyline along the lines of following your heart over tradition and family expectations, but aside from them no other Indian gets a look in. There's even two moments when Dench and Wilkinson refer to long conversations they have had independently with a husband and wife whose connection to the group has rocked their relationship to it's core, yet all we hear is a precis from the mouths of our middle class heroes.
All this sounds like I'm ragging on the film, but to be honest I did like it when I was watching. It was nice, the location work was fabulous, as Wilkinson says in the trailer "[I see the] light, colours, smiles. All life is here.", and he's right India is stunning, if nothing else this is a brilliant tourist video for the sub-continent.
I can't say I recommend it. But if you're seeing it for free don't say no. And do try out the trailer.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Rango
2011. Dir: Gore Verbinski. Starring: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Timothy Olyphant, Ned Beatty and Bill Nighy. ●●●●○
Chinatown, Pale Rider, Cat Ballou, Apocalypse Now, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Off the top of my head there are just a tiny number of the films that Rango either knocks off or pays homage to (depending on your point of view). I could probably go on to name at least five or six more. It's such a cine-literate film it's unbelieveable. That in itself would be a good enough reason to watch this animated movie. The good news is that as well as fusing all these elements it also happens to be laugh out loud funny, combining a touch of the surreal to the animated format. Just don't bother bringing the kids.
The film opens with Johnny Depp's unnamed Chameleon performing a virtual one-lizard show (his co-stars are plastic toys and dead bugs) of derring-do in his safe, comfortable glass cage. Not for long, as his owners lose him off the parcel shelf as they cross the Mojave desert. Pretty soon he's invented the persona of Rango and cleaning up the town of Dirt from it's least pleasant inabitants whilst falling for ranch owner Beans (Isla Fisher).
The comparisons to Chinatown are most striking. Once the story gets going the central mystery about water being dumped in the desert, as well as lines and even characters seem to be lifted directly from Roman Polanski's 1974 Noir masterpiece. With that in mind the identity of the bad guy comes as no surprise as it's the character most similar to Noah Cross - thanks to Ned Beatty for his delightful voice impersonation.
The action sequences are paced well both in terms of individually and where they fit in the film running. The initial crash sequence is slow enough to get a sense of what's happening, building tension, before it catches up into real time with a jolt and the central chase sequence involving a wagon, bats and The Ride of the Valkyries is both hilarious and edge of the seat stuff. Only the final showdown with Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) seems a slight let down - but then most Westerns disappoint with the fianl battle, even when they're basing the plan on Carry on Cowboy.
Slower moments are provided with the two dream sequences. The first goes in Dali surrealism territory, whilst the second has a mad Clint Eastwood (as voiced by Timothy Olyphant) cameo. There's also a scene by the fireside which speaks to the moral of the movie and is the closest we'll come to tears as audience members.
The design of the film is fantastic, from the always engaging characters (even the background figures are unique and funny and suitably disgusting) to the dryness of the vistas and at times star trails and mirages are so close to being real you doubt whether it's an animation at all. It was also a clever move to keep this in 2D. Any conversion of sterescope would have meant a serious reduction in the light somewhat destroying the illusion of desert heat.
The performances are all great, with Depp and Beatty in particular shining, from a cast outside of Depp who are not so famous it seems like stunt casting.
I would question though whether this is a film for kids at all. Some of the humour is either too bawdy - "Our Mother had an active social life" - or too over the heads of small children - prostate examinations? Most of it is also derived from the references which most kids won't understand. That's not to say they will be bored - there's ample belching and action to keep them entertained but be under no illusions this is a film for the parents even more than it is for their children that force them to go.
