Chappie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Chappie

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Dev Patel is the common thread in the week's two new features:

First Position, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

First Position

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Since Jeffrey Blitz's great 2002 documentary "Spellbound," you can write the treatments for such pix by Mad Libs (choose activity: spelling bee, crosswords, ballroom dancing; add backstory; climax at national finals). Bess Kargman's youth-ballet-competition doc "First Person" is formulaic, cheesy, and not particularly well-made, but Kargman chose a delightful sextet of kids to track, and they imbue the flick with more humor and joy than it deserves. What makes the kids so impressive is not so much their virtuosity as their seriousness (often singleness) of purpose, their perseverance through intense physical pain, their professionalism. Everyone comes off well except a couple of the parents, one a total Tiger Mother, another who with a few words manages to put the weight of the world on his daughter's shoulders. Kargman needed to tighten up the story - at times, despite the supposed rigor of the Youth America Grand Prix, it seems everyone who fucks up gets a Tonya Harding retake - but she's made sharp enough casting choices to overcome her directorial failings and the movie's good clean fun.