A movie has magically appeared to us this late in the spring, that threatens to dim any further offerings for quite a while. John Madden (“Shakespeare In Love”) is back amongst us and has clearly not lost his master’s touch.

This time he gives us a song of India with lyrics by a disparate band of British pilgrims, cast adrift in the colored smoke and incense of modern day India.

The story features Sonny Kapoor, a young Indian entrepreneur, (Dev Patel, “Slumdog Millionaire”) eager to make good in his domineering mother’s eyes. Sonny hopes to bring his deceased father’s decaying tourist hotel into the wi-fi generation and restore his legacy. Sonny dreams of luring retiring and elderly Britons to this corner of India. So he sends out online brochures depicting the hotel in its grand heydays. Five British retirees buy in and set about leaving all behind them to spend their last years in exotic Rajasthan. Patel has matured into a strong actor with great comedic timing since “Slumdog.” His Sonny has his own story, a love affair with a gorgeous Sunaina Tena Desae, that is threatened by mean Mama.

One by one their names appear on screen, with a narration by one Evelyn Greenslade, (Judi Dench) who is writing a blog on her own story.

We meet the aching-boned and rheumy-eyed Muriel (a magnificent Maggie Smith, a grand actress who refuses to retire and keeps coming at us with stunning characters) who is only on board here so she can get a much cheaper hip replacement, and then rush back to white England. Muriel is a rabid racist who tells her black doctor as he is washing his hands, “You can’t wash that color off.”

Dench’s Evelyn has made her choice, because her husband died leaving her so in debt she is forced to sell her flat. She refuses to live with her kids and so sails forth. She has been a proper wife in a comfortable suburban world for so many years, that she now finds herself a lovely old bird who has found the cage door open, and a stunning colorful and magical world laid out before her.

There is Norman Cousins (Ronald Pickup who picked up the role meant for Peter O’Toole) a horny old fading raconteur who lies about his age on Meetup.com blogs and hopes to end his days in bed with whomever will tumble.

Madge Hardcastle (Celia Imrie) is a strong woman at odds and ends with her world, and who hopes to find a suitable companion somewhere along the line. Madge shares the bumpy ride with a mismatched married couple, Doug and Jean Ainslee (The great Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton) Mrs. Ainslee must have gleaned her idea of India from old Sabu movies, as she is permanently horrified with the reality.

The sanest and most amiable of the lot is a retired high court justice, Graham Dashwood (who else but Tom Wilkinson) who signed on because he laments his lost youth spent in this very town and where some 40 years ago, a love affair went sour. The moment, and it is an incredible moment, where he is reunited with this youthful lover, is filmed in such a way as to take each of our hearts and break them in unison. It is one of the great moments in film.

“The Best Exotic” is once again, one of those marvelous films, so sharply written, so lovingly filmed and mounted, that any reviewer has to dance lightly around the scenes, avoiding the slightest slip of the keys that might weaken the surprises or dim the glow of the moment, and there are so many of those.

Madden has not lost his master’s touch at putting the right people together in the right places. His camera catches the color and complexities of Jaiphur without dwelling on the poverty and only lightly touching on the caste system, when one of the most obnoxious of the guests finds a connection with a lowly servant girl.

Dench and Wilkinson are the strongest characters, but each guest is painted in just enough color and detail so as not to marginalize any one. The screenplay by Ol Parker is based on a novel “These Foolish Things,” by Deborah Moggach. It begs to be read. “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is a candy-colored, jasmine-scented potion designed to clear the mind and brighten the heart.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor.