Movie review: British acting royalty checks in to ‘Marigold Hotel’

If for nothing else, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” deserves praise for courting an underserved box-office demographic (so-called “senior citizens”) and for assembling an energetic, wily A-team of English actors to demonstrate that dramatic chops definitely do not diminish with age.

A royal cast of actors

While this canny if schematic adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s genial geriatric novel “These Foolish Things” might have limited appeal to younger audiences, it nonetheless offers an object lesson in the potent allure of great acting and in the powers of openness, curiosity and tolerance to stave off the ravages of old age.

Ably directed by John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”) from a serviceable script by Ol Parker (“Imagine Me and You”), “Marigold Hotel” is freighted with obvious life lessons and given to sappy situations. But with a cast led by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy, as well as exuberant young Indian star Dev Patel (“Slumdog Millionaire”), it manages to trip lightly past its pitfalls and deliver an honest jolt of world-weary optimism.

The by-the-book setup is this: Seven cash-strapped British retirees respond to a glossy brochure from the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Elderly and Beautiful) in bustling Jaipur, India, where they’re promised cozy accommodations in their golden years for a cut-rate price. In other words, they’re invited to outsource their retirements.

In rote fashion, we’re introduced to the seven pensioners: Recently widowed Evelyn (Dench, 77), whose late husband frittered away their savings; timid Douglas (Nighy, 63) and his shrewish wife Jean (Penelope Wilton, 65), who invested their savings in their daughter’s failed internet startup; faded playboy Norman (Ronald Pickup, 71), who still passes himself off as 40-ish on dating sites; oft-married lonely heart Madge (Celia Imrie, 59), desperate to avoid being a stay-at-home grandma, and recently laid off housekeeper Muriel (Smith, 77), a tart-tongued xenophobe who travels to India mainly for a cheap-o hip replacement operation.