Ol Parker gives actors room to make romantic optimism convincing. His scripts are warm and often enjoyable, but he can prolong a courtship well beyond our patience and mistake a busy ensemble for a story.
Fi1m perspective
In The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), Judi Dench and Bill Nighy take a walk and talk about nothing much. We were moved by the way Dench lets Evelyn give up hoping, then begin again, in the space of that conversation. Parker’s script has not earned all that feeling, but it has made room for it. His writing is often enjoyable for just this reason: he gives good actors a chance to suggest more than his tidy stories contain.
He wrote and directed the romantic comedy Imagine Me & You (2005) before adapting Deborah Moggach’s novel for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012). He has described writing the Marigold roles specifically to attract Dench and Maggie Smith. The first film is enjoyable despite its predictability, with Dench and Nighy giving the retirement story some uncertainty. Its tendency to make India serve the visitors’ personal growth is harder to excuse.
John Madden’s The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel gives those characters more occupations without finding enough reason to follow them. Evelyn is offered work as a fabric buyer, Douglas guides tours and Muriel does the accounts; the script keeps everyone busy. Dev Patel has the worst of it as Sonny, whose blunders and shouting make him difficult to like. The warmth survives in parts, but here Parker stretches a modest story across too many people and lets his actors do the rescuing.
Writing and directing Mamma Mia Here We Go Again (2018), he uses the songs to connect Sophie’s story with Young Donna’s. Lily James makes this uneven musical worth an evening, despite the overextended romantic backstory. Robert Yeoman’s bright photography and the indulgent sets by Alan MacDonald and John Frankish help, although Parker’s staging relies too often on affection for the songs. Christine Baranski gives Tanya a comic precision the writing sometimes lacks. Moving between past and present cannot disguise every stretch of waiting.
He returned to romantic comedy as writer-director of Ticket to Paradise (2022), with George Clooney and Julia Roberts. His habit of writing for particular performers makes sense after watching Dench and Nighy do so much for him. Start with Mamma Mia Here We Go Again, but expect to spend some of the evening waiting for the next song.
Biography
Ol Parker is an English screenwriter, director and producer. Born Oliver Parker on 2 June 1969 in London, he was educated at Clare College, Cambridge. He began his career writing for television series such as Grange Hill before moving into feature films.
His screenwriting credits include The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and its sequel The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015). He has also written and directed Imagine Me & You (2005), Now Is Good (2012), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) and Ticket to Paradise (2022).
Parker married actress Thandiwe Newton in 1998; they separated in 2022.
