First movie was great - this somehow has lost its way and comes across as hollow, trite and just out to screw the audiences out of another buck.Shame on the producers - this type of film is a one off. A sequel should never have been made but greed wins out as usual as does artistic integrity.This was truly awful and a mere shadow of the excellent original film!

Dev Patel's career has matured over his Indian trilogy, starting with Slumdog Millionaire, and then the two Exotic Marigold Hotels, and then Lion. Ironically the Indian Patel clan own thousands of hotels across the USA, so not sure if it's a coincidence or not. "A Patel Motel Cartel?" is an insightful NYT magazine article published on 4 July 1999 (Independence Day!) and written by Oxford graduate Tunku Varadarajan.This is a charming sequel, and Richard Gere is Richard Gere, suave and appealing to the audience. Jai ho! Bill Nighy is Bill Nighy, fantastic, and I remember first seeing him in the mini-series The Men's Room back in the 90s. Actually, Bill's wife Diana Quick has Indian ancestors.The ending has a dance scene (what else?) just as Slumdog Millionaire ended.I would love to see a sequel, but the director has said this is unlikely because the actors are getting on in their years. Perhaps there should be a reboot with a younger stellar cast that brings together actors needing a comeback.

Hi, I'm a movie fanatic: action, kick boxer, zombies, soppy love stories, you name it. The first one was okay. As a baby boomer woman (so you won't stereotype my review), I found the first one a little boring and predictable. It was also depressing, not because of age or for any of the reasons that one might expect, but because it seemed to take a negative view throughout much of the movie. Let's take the wife, Jean Ainsle. At some point, you say to yourself, "Okay, okay, I have it. She's a (you know what). You don't have to beat it to death." But all of that is nothing compared to this movie. Even the sequences with Richard Gere and (not to spoil it) that are supposed to be charming do not make the grade. I will look up more about John Madden's life at some point but for now, has he been in therapy for his entire life for depression? Is he on antidepressants? What's the deal. These are not clever twists. We've seen all of this before in better movies.The negativity got so repetitive and useless--with all of the characters--if you think about it that I wondered what the point was. When Jean Ainsle showed up, I thought, "Oh yes, I guess we have to go here again." Sure, there are some glowing moments, but by that point, I wondered how I'd even made it through the movie. Earlier, I'd thought of just turning if off, but I plugged through.A movie cannot redeem itself simply through location or giving us more insight into another culture.

It's especially sad when such an incredibly talented group of actors are stuck in a movie with a terrible script and stereotypes that evoke an eye-roll at least every three minutes. For starters, the story line would have been greatly improved if the opening scene had been focused on the blazing funeral pyre of the Sonny Kapoor character. If he was irritating in the original, he has crossed into the realm of unbearable in this sequel. With a script that seems to be a direct lift from the Golden Girls, Jungle Fever and a bad country music video, this unnecessary sequel had nowhere to go but down and it did. Terribly written, clumsily directed and with subplots that are awkwardly interjected and fragmented, this was totally unnecessary. It speaks volumes when Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judy Dench cannot rescue a film from itself. On the other hand, it was a cure for my chronic insomnia.