The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about a group of elderly people who now live in an old-folks home in India, and its manager. This is the type of movie that follows the paths of ten plus people as they deal with their respective issues. I would recommend watching the first movie before watching this one. While it is possible to understand what is going on without it, there is little to remind the viewers of the personalities that live in the hotel. Most of the plots are unrelated to each other. In the first movie, the characters mingled with each other and learned from each other, but in this movie, they typically remain separate, so the film feels choppier. Like any anthology, some plots with entertain more than others. Some of them feel very forced, while others feel very natural. There are numerous 'coincidences' and forced plot points that drag for a while before resolving immediately and disrupting flow. Despite this, all of them deal with being afraid of what you want and learning to actually live instead of just existing until you die. There are lots of small details that feel unimportant until later. This is typically a strength in my eyes, by there were just so many details that led to such small rewards that I began to not care as much. This is an enjoyable film that is not as good as the first but is still an entertaining, fell-good story about living life to the fullest.
