Review: Slum Dog Millionaire (2008)

2009 Feb 12

Movie: Slum Dog Millionare (2008)
Starring: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Frida Pinto
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Music: A. R. Rahman
Photography:

Score: 6.7 out of 10

This movie seems to be THE cross over movie for Indian film industry. A movie set in India with Indian actors has garnered so much attention that it has become a sleeper hit. It has even secured the best picture award at the Golden Globes and now has landed 8 Oscar nominations. With all the hype, it is hard to see it with an open mind. But see it, I did.

The movie starts of with the protagonist a teenager Jamal who is in police custody and is being worked upon (desi style) to make him confess that he cheated in the game show "Who wants to be a millionaire" where he has won Rs 20m. But truth is on Jamal's side and so he keeps on saying that he won because he knew the answers. The Police Inspector becomes curious about Jamal's life and starts to listen to his story.

The story is about 2 slum dwelling orphans. They are Muslims and they lost their mother during the communal riots. They grow up in the slums. In order to feed themselves they do odd jobs and get robbed of their childhood.

They seem to be taking care of themselves when they are offered help by an organization which claims to take care of kids. They take good care of them initially and the kids are taught to sing. It turns out that they blind children by scooping out their eyes using acid. The older brother sees it being done on another hapless boy. He is now asked to bring his brother Jamal so that they can do the same to him.. The 2 brothers pull a swift escape from their captors. They also have a girl who is accompanying them. As they are running away from their captors they jump into a running train but the girl cannot make it. So she is held back by the bad guys.

What follows next is a sequence of trials and tribulations the boys undergo as they do bit jobs to survive. They turn out to be street-smart and become guides at Tourist spots where they look for tips from wealthy foreigners. One incident stands out where an American couple hire Jamal the main character to show them around. But as luck would have it their car wheels gets stolen by slum dwellers when they have gone out to see the sights. A big Indian in some kind of a uniform starts battering the boy putting him down and kicking him. The American couple gets him out of it and the boy says "You wanted to see the real India. See this is it". That one scene said a lot of things.

The younger one - Jamal - is a good one and the older one is made of more bad stuff. So Jamal leaves his brother and grows up to be a tea vendor in a call center company. But he also tries and gets on 'Who wants to be a millionaire.'

What follows from here is some what a typical Bollywood rags to riches story. Where the director Danny Boyle shows a lot of grip is in the early part of Jamal's life. But once the home stretch for the contest starts, it becomes very predictable and does not seem any different from the thousands of Hindi movies we have seen before in which the hero is a driver and falls in love with the rich man's daughter and earns 50 Lakh rupees by winning a boxing match to win her hand. In fact I feel a regular Hindi movie would have had more drama even though Slum Dog shines with the restrain it exhibits.

The exposure of the underbelly of India i.e the slums of Mumbai is well deserved. I do not have any sympathies for the people who think that this movie shows the bad side of India to get an award. Well! that is the truth. What is the point in hiding it.? That does not make the problem go away.

The 3 major actors Dev Patel, Frieda Pinto, Anil Kappoor and Irfan Khan have given good performances. In fact none of the grown up characters have to work hard at acting. There roles do not require any effort. That explains why there is not even one nomination for acting in this movie. But it is the child actors who shine. The director has made an entertaining movie but this is certainly not his best movie. But what matters is what the members of the Motion Picture Academy thought during the months of February and March in 2009. And they thought Slum Dog was a superlative film.

The music is really no big deal. But A R Rahman has been nominated for 3 Oscars. But the 2 song nominations do not deserve them. They have no special musicality even by Bollywood standards. So this is one of the Academy's idiosyncrasies.



I think this should be a 6.7 out of 10.