Review: 'second Best' Marigold Hotel Lives Up To Its Title

This isn't to say that "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" — so named after an actual hotel in the movie — won't appeal to the same fans who flocked to the first film. The sequel brings us back to Jaipur, India, a few years after the British retirees first made their home in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, where they discovered that although the place wasn't as luxurious as advertised, it was full of life — and life lessons. The film, directed by John Madden (who wrote the script with Ol Parker) opens with Muriel and Sonny on a road trip to a California retirement company they're hoping will fund Sonny's franchise dreams. Back in India, Sonny is too obsessed with his plan to pay any attention to his impending wedding — an obvious source of frustration to his fiancee, lovely Sunaina (Tina Desai). [...] he's so driven that when a guest named Guy Chambers (Richard Gere) shows up — and yes, that does sound like a porn star, but actually he's a novelist — Sonny's convinced he's the inspector that the retirement company's CEO said he'd send, incognito, to check out the place. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America "for some language and suggestive comments.