Cocoon. Driving Miss Daisy. Gran Torino, with Clint Eastwood on the cusp of 80 proclaiming with Dirty Harry-like grit: "Get off my lawn!"
Another lurks on the multiplex horizon. The official kickoff movie of the summer might be The Avengers, a comic-book conglomeration of the usual action-packed superheroes.
MORE: Dench, Wilkinson stay busy
VIDEO: Dev Patel discusses working with cast of 'Marigold'
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But also opening Friday is a travelogue infused with comedy and drama that's supported by a different dream team, one whose skills were honed by treading the boards of England's heralded stages instead of working out on a treadmill.
The opposition might have Iron Man and The Hulk on its side. But the exquisitely pedigreed underdog known as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel boasts James Bond's boss and Benjamin Franklin as headliners as Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson top an ensemble of seven seasoned Brits (average age: 68 vs. 36 for The Avengers cast) as pensioners who head off to budget-friendly India to ride out their golden years.
Trailer: 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'
Both movies already have proven their box-office might overseas. No surprise that a blockbuster like The Avengers has amassed more than $200 million. But the modest Marigold Hotel is holding its own as it zeroes in on $70 million.
What superpower could match the grace that radiates from Dench, 77, as the silver-haired legend coos over doing a segment on the Today show the day before to promote animal adoption?
"Such nice dogs there. A beagle, very nice. An Irish wolfhound. Nice dog that. I spoke to my family about it," she says. Then, a bit sheepishly, Dench adds, "Our dog is hear ing every word of it." Alas, her interview partner, Wilkinson, 64, is running behind. He should have heeded one of the folksy sayings favored by Franklin, the American icon he portrayed to Emmy-winning acclaim on HBO's John Adams miniseries: Lost time is never found again.
Soon enough, he plops down in a chair, looking rather tan after toiling on the New Mexico set of The Lone Ranger. He seems preoccupied, however, and who can blame him after gazing upon Johnny Depp's bizarrely costumed Tonto in the blazing-h ot desert sun?
Dench lights up. "How's tricks?"
"I'm feeling under the weather," he declares.
"You look too well to be ill," she counters.
Career Highlights
Meet two actors who are in the prime of their careers at an age when most people retire. Both Judi Dench, 77, and Tom Wilkinson, 64 â€" co-stars in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel â€" earned their acting stripes on the British stage and in TV roles. They found their breakout roles in movies the same year: 1997.
- Breakout film role: As Queen Victoria in Mr. Brown in 1997.
- Oscar note: All six of her nominations came after age 60.
- < strong>Oscar nominations:Mrs. Brown, 1997; Shakespeare in Love, 1998 (win); Chocolat, 2000; Iris, 2001; Mrs. Henderson Presents, 2005; Notes on a Scandal, 2006.
- Franchise work: As M in seven James Bond adventures, starting with 1995’s GoldenEye.
- Fact: Played two British queens, Victoria and Elizabeth I, in back to back years and was Oscar nominated for both.
- Spousal support: She and her late husband, Michael Williams, starred together in the British sitcom A Fine Romance, 1981-84.
Breakout film role: As an out-of-work steel mill supervisor turned stripper in The Full Monty in 1997. - Oscar note: Both of his nominations came after age 50.
- Oscar nominations:In the Bedroom, 2001; Michael Clayton, 2007
- Franchise work: Mobster Carmine Falcone in 2005’s Batman Begins; an IMF leader in 2011’s Mission: Impossible â€"Ghost Protocol.
- Fact: Played two American political figures on cable TV in 2008, founding father Benjamin Franklin in the John Adams miniseries and GOP leader James Baker in Recount, and was Emmy nominated for both (won for John Adams).
- Spousal support: He and wife Diana Hardcastle app eared as Joe Kennedy Sr. and wife Rose in the 2011 miniseries The Kennedys and are in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Judi Dench
Tom Wilkinson
"Oh, I am ill," he insists with a prickly resolve. "I don't feel bad. But I've got all these symptoms." Perhaps realizing the conversation has devolved into a clichéd exchange about health woes, Wilkinson shoos away the topic: "Enough about me."
There's a cozy comfort level between Dench and Wilkinson, whose guy-next-door visage masks an endless reserve of dramatic know-how, that comes from being colleagues on at least three other occasions. Indeed, the entire Marigold Hotel gang â€" which includes Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Pene lope Wilkinson, Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup â€" is quite incestuous, having performed together regularly over the years.
"It was like a theater company, actually," Dench says. "On tour," Wilkinson adds.
Most notably, they both showed up in 1998's best-picture Oscar winner, Shakespeare in Love, which just happened to be directed by Marigold Hotel's John Madden.
She was Queen Elizabeth I. He was a loan shark. And one of them took home an Academy Award for a mere eight minutes of screen time. "It wasn't me," Wilkinson duly notes.
Less memorable was Wetherby from way back in 1985. Tell Dench that you 've never seen it, and she doesn't hesitate to confess, "Neither have I."
Then there was 2002's The Importance of Being Earnest. Dench politely mouths her reaction upon hearing the title, but Wilkinson has no such qualms: "It wasn't good."
Two peas in a pod
Critics say that is not the case with Marigold Hotel, which finds each senior struggling with unique circumstances while coping with living conditions that can kindly be described as shabby chic.
Dench's Evelyn is a debt-ridden widow who declares her independence by taking a job and learning the ways of the Internet as a blogger. It's a situation somewhat familiar to the actress, having lost her own husband of 30 years, actor Michael Williams, to lung cancer in 2001.
Why did she sign on?
Two words: "John Madden." Their initial foray, 1997's Mrs. Brown, earned the actress her first of six Oscar nominations for her performance as Queen Victoria. "He's the most delightful man to work with," she says.
Wilkinson's Graham is a newly retired gay high-court judge who has returned to the land of his youth to reunite with a long-lost love. Why did the actor, who also collaborated with Madden on last year's The Debt, sign on for the 9½-week shoot in Udaipur and Jaipur?
He tends to trust his gut. "You have that thing when you are an actor, a moment of recognition when you read something and you think, 'I want to do this. I want to do this. I'll do this.' The last consideration is how much you are going to get paid. That never really comes into it."
Dench is reminded how a familiar reference in the screenplay served as a sign she should finally visit India.
"I can't read very well now," says the actress, who recently went public with the news that she has vision-impairing macular degeneration.
"Finty, my daughter, reads scripts for me. She opened it to a line that says, 'What larks, Pip,' " taken from the Dickens classic Great Expectations. "I've always used that phrase. It's a saying we've had in the family. She said, 'Oh, Mom, don't read any further. What larks, Pip.' "
Another plus for Wilkinson is that his wife, actress Diana Hardcastle, was hired as a love interest for Pickup's goatish rake. Was it like a second honeymoon? "We've never had a first honeymoon," he says with a harrumph. "I've done it a few times, worked with my wife. And initially I thought, ' This is not going to be so good.' But it has always turned out to be a blissful experience."
The rest of the cast also was glad for Hardcastle's arrival. Says Dench, "She came to everybody's rescue with a huge trunk of medicinal aids."
'Rock stars' of cinema
Dev Patel, 22, the English-born star of 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, knew he had his work cut out for him when he agreed to play Sonny, the eternally optimistic if ill-equipped innkeeper who lures the oldsters to India. "I was quivering in my boots to be working with these rock stars of cinema."
He was touched by Wilkinson's emotional scenes but saves his highest praise for De nch. "My moments with her I will cherish for the rest of my career. She has this dangerous sense of humor and is so open and giving. There were no airs about anyone."
Having directed both actors multiple times, Madden knows what makes this stellar pair tick. "Judi finds it easier to play a part very different from who she is," he says.
"But she is like Evelyn in terms of the outward manifestations. She was initially alarmed to find the role was very like her. She thought people wouldn't be interested in it. It was hard to persuade her that the opposite would be true."
As for Wilkinson, whose breakout came in 1997's The Full Monty as a steel-mill supervisor turned stripper, "He is a very rare beast," Madden says. "He is astoundingly versatile. He can play the most imperious maligned soul imaginable at one moment, and then he can play a decent nobody and pull it all off effortlessly. I do not know quite how he's doing what he is doing. He just works off basic instinct."
Retirement does not seem to be in the cards for either actor as both continue to be in high demand for films big â€" Wilkinson was in Mission: Impossible â€" Ghost Protocol with Tom Cruise, Dench just wrapped up her seventh James Bond outing as spy chief M in Skyfallâ€" and small, like Marigold Hotel.
And, if they did, Wilkinson asks, "what would you do?"
Dench: "I don't know."
Wilkinson: "What would I do?"
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