For those who have been there, India can be a bureaucratic nightmare, where odd and arbitrary rules are capriciously enforced by a whimsical and occasionally quite greedy series of authorities, some of them self-appointed. The situation can be considerably worsened when an honest official comes into office, a man who believes that all that country's many rules and laws should be enforced all the time. In this story, the main business of a group of former aristocrats living in central India is leading tours into a national park and re-enacting the lifestyles of colonial India. However, this has only been possible because the park's officials applied its rules with some sense of perspective. In this wry and leisurely comedy, the worst possible disaster has struck: a small-minded and very honest official has just gotten posted to the position of park director, and he is bent on following the letter of the law.
~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide