Slumdog Millionaire - Movie Review

[philosoraptor42]

I should probably warn everyone that I've never personally watched this trailer...

It felt a little overrated and I found that it often felt very obvious that this was a British movie about India, rather than an Indian movie. There were a couple of parts which I found particularly odd.

The 'slumdog' on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" finds himself justifying how he could have known all the answers. His explanation for knowing what Lord Rama famously holds in his right hand is very odd. Sure the protagonist is a Muslim, but there are images of Lord Rama all over India and he's a major feature of many Hindu festivals such as Diwali. It's pretty much common knowledge that Rama is the one who carries a bow and arrow, yet Jamal claims that the only way he knows it is due to running into a child randomly dressed as Rama (and no more identifiable than the many pictures) while running away from a Hindu mob who are attacking Muslims.

The other example is in regard to a question about whose face is found on a hundred dollar bill. As part of insisting that Jamal could not have known the answer to this question he is asked whose face is on a particular rupee note. Now as far as I remember, Mahatma Gandhi's face is actually found on EVERY rupees note in India and the idea that the protagonist would not realise this seems completely daft.

The other problem with the movie is character formation. Plenty of things happen to the characters and the acting seemed good enough, yet I didn't seem to really feel engaged with the characters. There's two things I think that explain this. Firstly the main characters are shown growing up, so for each of them there are three different actors. The jump from one actor to the other is not terribly smooth. While the individual performances are very engaging, they don't link very well with each other. The second explanation is that a central female character in the movie never really seems to get a chance to develop no matter which of the actresses is playing her, yet she is (as you might imagine) of pivotal importance within the story.

While moments of tension or suspense are very scarce even in spite of some serious hardships depicted (this movie was named by its own advertising posters "the feelgood movie of the year" for goodness sake!), it's still a good fun movie, very enjoyable and well worth watching. Don't expect a masterpiece though...

3.5/5

(Edit: Yes, the score used to be 4, but having thought about it overnight I've changed my mind. I was disinclined to give a low score to something recommended so highly by close friends, so I feel I was being a little over-generous.)

Update: What the hell did I ever give this 4/5 for? I must have been out of my skull. This should most definitely have 3/5. It's deeply average and extremely overrated.