The Final Answer Is: Fake

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2008)

"Slumdog Millionaire" is the kind of film that many people will probably rabidly adore, because it's energetic, invigorating and, at first glance at least, feels like something we haven't seen before. But a whole other group of movie goers may find themselves resistant to its questionable charms, as I did. "Slumdog Millionaire" is a fake. An accomplished fake, to be sure, but a fake nonetheless.
The film tells the story of Jamal, who grows up in the slums of Mumbai, India, only to find himself in the hot seat on the popular Indian television version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Each question he's asked during the game show triggers a flashback sequence that fills in a little bit more of his story -- we see him become estranged from his brother, who gives himself over to the life of a gangster, and we see him stay true through all of his adversity to his one love, a girl named Latika.
It's fairly clear that director Danny Boyle intends this film to be a fairy tale, with the love story providing the film its heart. But much of the film is nasty and unpleasant, reveling in every distasteful detail about Jamal's childhood. Within the first 20 minutes of the film, we've seen Jamal tortured with electricity, Jamal jumping into a vile pit of human excrement in order to get an autograph from his favorite Bollywood star (this scene is played for laughs, because isn't someone covered in sh*t always good for a laugh?) and we see his mother bludgeoned to death by anti-Muslim extremists right before Jamal's and his brother's eyes. Later, we see small children getting their eyes burned out with hot spoons in order to make them more effective beggars. Everyone in the movie but Jamal and Latika, who remain blank slates as characters, is hateful and repellent. Boyle heaps calamity on top of calamity for so much of the film that its facile, simplistic conclusion wrings impossibly false. You can't have it both ways. You can't have your film be both a gritty, slice-of-life indictment and a frothy romantic soufflé. The end product is like "City of God" meets "Moulin Rouge!"
This isn't the first time I've felt this way about Danny Boyle movies. He frequently strikes me as a director who's not in control of his own films. His brand of film-making mistakes the fast and furious for interesting and compelling, and he gets in the way of his own narratives, distracting us when he should be drawing us in.
A lot of people might mistake this for a great film. And who knows? -- maybe it is. After all, greatness is a matter of opinion. But my opinion is that this film falls very short of greatness.
Grade: B-