Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle) 2008

The advertising campaign for this movie was especially sh*tty.  Sh*tty in the fact that there wasn’t one.  Seriously, this movie is a contender in many critic’s eyes for best movie of the year and have you seen even ONE trailer for this movie?  I don’t think of myself as someone closed up in a cave when it comes to upcoming movies so when even I haven’t seen a trailer for it you know its bad.  I have seen all of Danny Boyle’s movies and even I almost passed up this movie if not for the near universal praise for it.

Slumdog Millionaire starts out with young Jamal being interrogated by police because they believe he is cheating on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  Intelligent contestants only go as far as the 64,000 question and this slumdog is one question away from 20,000,000 rupees.  We are then given a series of flashbacks to his childhood with his brother Salim and another girl Latika.  Jamal is on the show to find his lost love Latika.  The mystery being is Jamal’s success due to his intelligence, is he cheating, or is it fate?  So I guess you could say it is Frank Capra’s version of The Usual Suspects with a little twist of Bollywood?  On second thought, f*ck it that’s too weird.

I do have to give Boyle credit in that he never settles on one genre.  In his career he has done zombie apocalypse (sorry, rage infected human apocalypse) in 28 Days Later, Millions, sci fi in Sunshine, Trainspotting, and now comedy/drama of Slumdog.  What I was surprised by was the depth of the story and directing.  We get the story which is good, but we are also given a look at India.  We are given a snapshot of life in India with the vast slums, the poverty, the people, and their activities.  All this is done so subtly that we really see the great direction.  India is a character in itself.

I mentioned Capra earlier because I think you could view the story as warm and uplifting or too sappy.  My advise is to take the rod out of your ass and just go with it.  The performances from the children to the adults are uniformly good and play their roles well.  The story is interesting and uplifting and the movie on the whole came out of nowhere to be a real surprise.  Word of mouth is going to be this movies best friend seeing as how I still haven’t seen a trailer for this movie.  That being said, this was a great movie.  If its playing near you, I recommend you give it a shot.  P.S. where do I get clothes as pimp as the host in the movie?