The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) is a British comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by John Madden. Seven retirees leave England for a hotel in Jaipur that its young owner Sonny — played by Dev Patel — advertises as a haven of affordable luxury. The walls are peeling. The plumbing is optimistic. India, however, turns out to have other ideas about what these people need.

Each of the seven arrives carrying something: a debt, a secret, a grief, a long-buried memory. Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton play a couple running from different versions of the same unhappiness. Judi Dench arrives alone and finds herself unexpectedly present. Tom Wilkinson is looking for someone he left behind decades ago. Maggie Smith plays a woman who has weaponised her own bigotry and is, slowly, losing the battle.

The film works because it takes its characters seriously rather than treating old age as a punchline. It is warm without being soft, and the Jaipur locations give it a pulse that a studio set never could. Stream The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) on iFILM.