Taking a successful recipe and adding a few new ingredients is one of movies’ most-served dishes.
“Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,”
‘The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’
Taking an unexpectedly successful recipe and adding a few new ingredients is one of Hollywood’s most-served dishes.
And it turns out that grownup-skewing, art-house-friendly movies aren’t off the menu. Exhibit A: “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the sequel to the aging-Brits-in-India comedy-drama that became o-ne of 2012’s surprise hits.
Opening in theaters Friday, after blockbuster-opening-like screenings Thursday night, “Second Best” picks up where the first movie — centered on a group of British seniors who move to a downtrodden hotel in Jaipur, India — left off. Dev Patel’s super-eager hotel proprietor is pursuing two dreams at once: expanding his business and marrying his girlfriend. Judi Dench and Bill Nighy, who fostered an unexpected friendship in the first movie, are tiptoeing toward something more. Ronald Pickup and Diana Hardcastle, playing unlikely lovers in the first movie, are trying to figure out where their relationship is heading. Maggie Smith, who helped Patel turn around his business in the first movie, is now co-manager of the first Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Added to the mix are two new arrivals, played by Richard Gere and Tamsin Greig, vying for the hotel’s sole available room; the return of Nighy’s prickly wife, played by Penelope Wilton; and a big traditional Indian wedding, which provides both distraction and inspiration.
Reviews so far are mixed-positive. Variety’s Peter Debruge seemed to like “Second Best” well enough: “Because the cast make their characters so lively, we’re happy for the chance to spend more time with them. . . . The laughs aren’t as numerous this time around, but at least they’re a little less obvious.” Hollywood Reporter critic Leslie Felperin didn’t, calling the sequel “honestly titled if nothing else,” and “a sluggish also-ran compared to its predecessor.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw gave “Second Best” 3 stars (out of 5), overlooking what he calls Smith’s “still unconvincing” Cockney accent and finding comfortable, if overly familiar, charm in the whole thing. “By bringing back the story of Brit retirees at a chaotic Indian hotel, director John Madden and his writer, Ol Parker, have given it the air of an unassuming BBC1 sitcom that grows on you.” “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is rated PG for some language. It runs 122 minutes.
‘Chappie’
In Dev Patel’s other movie this weekend, he plays a scientist who develops a robot that can think, learn — and feel. Which naturally gets him and his creation in trouble.
Directed by “District 9” filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, “Chappie” pits the creation of artificial intelligence against the forces threatened by it — including a robotics mogul and his partner, played by Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, who fear the new life-form’s impact on humanity, and their business.
Sharlto Copley, who played the beleaguered and transformed civil servant in “District 9” and a brutal enforcer in Blomkamp’s follow-up feature film, “Elysium,” provides the voice and movements of the title robot.
Blomkamp, who’s never been shy about infusing his slant on sci-fi with nuanced ideas, said recently he hopes the movie leads to a conversation “about spirituality and where the soul goes, what it is and what consciousness is.”
And it doesn’t sound like Blomkamp is done questioning. He recently signed on to direct the next sequel in the “Alien” series. “Chappie” is rated R for violence, language and brief nudity. It runs 120 minutes.
‘Unfinished Business’
Vince Vaughn is not exactly the first guy you’d think of going corporate. But in his second business-world-based comedy in less than three years (the other was 2013’s “The Internship,” which took in a lessthan-stellar $44.67 million in North America, a little short of its reported $58 million budget), Vaughn plays a small-business owner on a trip to Europe that’ll either save or sink his future in “Unfinished
Business.”
Along for the ride with Vaughn are his even more unlikely colleagues: Tom Wilkinson, smart but on the verge of retirement, and Dave Franco, goofy and eager and beyond inexperienced. Along the way there’s expense-account carousing, a clash with demonstrators and police during protests at a global economic summit, and a few odd sex-related detours (if the redband trailer is any indication).
Sienna Miller, after grim roles as spouses of doomed real-life figures in both “Foxcatcher” and “American Sniper,” gets to play something a little lighter as Vaughn’s former boss and corporate rival in the deal that could save his business from bankruptcy. Nick Frost and James Marsden also co-star. “Unfinished Business” is rated R for sexual content, nudity, language and drug use. It runs 91 minutes.
‘Red Army’
During the last decades of the Cold War, the Soviet hockey team ranked right up there with Stalin, Brezhnev and Red Square as a hissable symbol of America’s archrival superpower. The documentary “Red Army” tells the story of that team from the other side of the puck.
Opening Friday, “Red Army” centers on the hockey team’s captain, Slava Fetisov, and his journey on the ice and in life from being a Soviet symbol to contributing to his country’s new direction.
In his 4-star review, Philadelphia Inquirer critic Stephen Rea said “Red Army” is “madly entertaining,” and not just a sports movie but “a story of global consequences and historic proportions.” Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star Tribune agreed, saying in his 4-star review that the movie is “a miracle on ice all its own,” while Seattle Times reviewer Michael Upchurch — who also gave the movie 4 stars — said “Red Army” is “not just a terrific film but an important one — even if you don’t give two hoots about ice hockey.” “Red Army” is rated PG for mature themes and language. It’s in English and Russian, with English subtitles, and runs 85 minutes.