Bed and bored.

A bit of a hostage to fortune, that title. After charmed audiences propelled 2012’s 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to a $137m gross, it must h𝕴ave seemed pretty🦄 bomb-proof, though.

But there’s a distinct whiff of reheated second helpings about this admittedly jolly return to Jaipur’s jauntiest Brit-packed retirement home, where manager Sonny (a manically wisecracking Dev Patel) is wrestling with hotel-chain expansion plans and wedding worries, while director John Madden ensures that Judi Dench’s love-wary widow and Maggie Smith’s world-weary manager get lashings of screen time. Smith’s world-class way with an acid remark (“America? It made death look tempting”) cuts fearlessly through scr🐼eenwriter Ol Parker’s sentimentality-inclined script.

Having used up all of the culture-clash plots and curry gags last time around, the film settle♑s for a gentle will-they-won’t-they romance between Dench and fellow resident Bill Nighy. Beautifu🐻lly played and often touching, it’s not a pulse-racer, however. So the film is over-reliant on Sonny’s frantic and farcical attempts to win over mystery visitor Richard Gere, whom he suspects is an undercover inspector from a US hotel chain, potential partners for a second hotel. Gere, chiefly cougar-candy for Celia Imrie’s rapacious retiree and Sonny’s haughty mother, feels shoehorned into an already bulging crew of vintage Brit thespians.

Like its predecessor, the film takes a travelogue view of India, throwing lavish 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Monsoon Wedding-style nuptials and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Slumdog Millionaire-inspired dance routines into the mix to keep everything determinedly lively. Fewer sugary celebrations and some chewier late-life themes wouඣld have made this a much tast💜ier sequel.