Slumdog Millionaire Review

Slumdog Millionaire

Movie Review

Classy, thought provoking movies are like award season timed-buses. You wait all year for one, then come winter a slew of them leave you wondering why cinema can't be this rich all year round. Based on the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is perhaps the most hyped film of this awards season. Its been nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is apparently "the feel good film of the decade" according to movie posters. I'm surprised that doctors haven't taken to prescribing it as a cure for the common cold. But, frenzy of hype aside, is it any good?

In culinary terms, the film is ostensibly a fairy tale, mixed with lashings of Oliver Twist and poured over piping hot India. Jamal, played by Dev Patel works in a call centre and is one question away from winning 20 million rupees on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? when the film opens. He's being savagely questioned by two policemen, who don't believe that a Slumdog could have made it that far without cheating. Most of the film involves him telling selected episodes from his life as an orphan in order to prove how he knew the answers.

These vignettes are entertaining and keep the film from becoming an extended advertisement for Millionaire. The sense a viewer gets of a sometimes overcrowded, squalid India is real, as is the danger which young Jamal and his brother encounter. The film bounces along like this for the first two acts, with Jamal moving nomadically around India, at times living, at times surviving. Like all good memories though, perceptions of the past are better than the present, and the film sags noticeably when it catches up to itself.

Danny Boyle certainly slots his camera into some unusual places. One more than one occasion I found myself twisting my neck while whispering "Wow, I've never seen it shot like that before". Even the unmade face of India which he shows is beautiful and colourful.

The cast are unobtrusive and portray the dog eat dog sense of growing up in a country of approximately one billion people. Anil Kapoor acquits himself admirably as the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? quizmaster; a highlight of the movie is listening to him say the word "rupees" at various times.

Boyle should win the Oscar for Best Director, but I think his Jamal Twist, despite being a good movie behind the extensive hype, is not destined to win the top prize.

7/10