A rare story that could have become a classic..Alas!

Rating: 4/10 (13 February 2009)

Last things first - 10 Oscar nominations, 7 BAFTAs, 4 Golden globes and God knows how many more awards!!!! And all these awards are assumed to be prestigious, pity! By now, I assume everyone may be aware of the plot and the basic storyline of Slumdog Millionaire. The film scores high on the cinematography, screenplay, music and actually the rawness the film has... Some sequences here remain true to the actual condition. Like the backdrop of Mumbai and other places in Uttar Pradesh are beautifully depicted. The filthy slums and the untidy subways are natural. Director Danny Boyle uses many sequences to show cheating and inhumanness with many of pretty apparent from the face of it and some sidelined like the one where Salim prepares the mineral water bottle from the bottle picked from rags and the sobbing kids shown with the women when the brothers go to find cherry on the Pila street (which only a sensible director like Danny could do)
Now a story beautiful like this but how badly sub plotted!! Extreme loopholes which cant be ignored in the name of cinematic liberty
1) Where the hell do you find Mumbai slum kids in some 1-2 grade in a local government school reading 'The Three Musketeers'?? I myself haven't read it yet!! 2) The kids are waiting for their turn to sing as if some Indian Idol auditions are going on 3) A blind guy can recognize his early year friend (who were barely their together for some days) out of the trillion people in the world after 5-10 years of their separation merely by touching his face. This guy can also smell and tell which currency is this! As if this was not enough, he can also tell the name of the icon on the foreign bill, smiling with pride as if he was the governor who issued this bill!!!! Oh Miss Rowling - we have found a better wizard than HaRRY PottER, here in India..!! 4) Oh!! The international tourists can't make a difference between the guides and cheats. Over the top they believe the fake story by these cheats about an International Monument overriding what is written in the guidebook issued by the tourism department. 5) The tourists are so innocent to even handover a $100 bill to the person who robbed them miserably... 6) Jamal knows who invented a gun. Why? His brother had once got it from somewhere and threatened him muttering sounding something like colt... (Jamal - what do u eat for keeping your memory this good)... Boss - I myself have a refrigerator, cycle, table, chair...and I didn't knew I was supposed to know the names of their creators... 7) And then you have a game show host who is unnecessary teasing you in public (Was that necessary - Indian shows are not like this though...)... 8) D: Destiny.....Truly!! GOD had planned everything in Jamal's in a chronological order so that when he goes to the game show, he has no problems to remember the answers... 9) Don't you dare think slum people are illiterate or something - when they grow up, they automatically learn to speak in accented English better than many of the highly educated Doctors, engineers, police do....That's why the latters go only till 60000 but slum people go up to be a millionaire... (This was the secret answer to Irfan Khan's question in the beginning of the movie)
OK....OK.....I have many more weak points in the movie but I think I should leave something for you toooo......
The movie is a good time pass if you say so......entertaining onewith some strong points that I said earlier Cinematography, Editing are topnotch... AR Rahman's music grows on you and is superb...but again the maestro has some better scores to his credit that this is pretty expected from him....He should have got all these awards a lot earlier..
Acting by all the actors is fine but the pick of the lot are certainly the child actors... I never understood the media attention Frieda is getting!! Don't mind it but she had a some 5 minute role totally and that too to look up to Jamal on the foot over bridge with a backdrop of a local train...plus the number in the end credits (which I thought was perfectly blended with the end credits)
Finally, it was a brave attempt - Things depicted in a good way but a more should have gone into research and writing.... Nevertheless India has a lot of positives that these small negatives don't stand.....JAI HO!!