Review - "Slumdog Millionaire"

on Wikipedia
on IMDB
Directed by Danny Boyle
Winner of the Oscar for:
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Score
Best Song
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Cinematography
Best Film Editing
Best Sound Mixing





Dev Patel as Jamal







Freida Pinto as Latika









Madhur Mittal as Salim








I finally watched "Slumdog Millionaire" Saturday night. It's the story of Jamal, his brother Salim, and his soulmate Latika. They all grew up in the slums of Mumbai, and some really awful stuff happens to them along the way.

The movie actually starts when Jamal is in his early 20s. He's on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", he doing really well, and someone assumes that means he's cheating. That's when the flashbacks kick in, and they go all the way back to Jamal as a wee lad.

Slumdog was marketed here in the US as an uplifting story. I guess it's a pretty happy ending, but I was so bummed out by the time I got there that the ending was basically just enough to get me back to neutral. The movie won a truckload of awards. It shows how rough heartbreaking-ly rough parts of India can be. I can see why some people really liked it. I wasn't one of those people.

"Slumdog Millionaire" goes on my Significant list. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, and it was on every major critic's Top 10 list for 2008. It's the kind of movie that people will bring up over dinner for the next six months because it just came out on DVD and it wasn't in theaters nationwide for very long. Rent it or throw it on the queue when you get a chance. That way you can be part of the conversation, but you won't have spent 20 bucks.