Not terrible but don't believe the hype

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2009)

This isn't a long film by modern standards but I spent the last quarter waiting for it to end. There are lots of good things in it - the images of Indian slums are dazzlingly put together and there is some nice humour in the face of adversity. Best of all is the music, which should definitely bag an Oscar. But there is a lot wrong with it. Here are my main niggles: 1. The device of linking Jamal's answers on "Millionaire" to stories of his past life works at first but rapidly gets repetitive. Here the film suffers from its relationship with the novel. This sort of device works better on the page than on film. 2. The central love story, which is imposed on the film in order to give it some narrative drive, doesn't really convince. Frankly when he kissed her at the end I didn't care one way or the other. It was impossible to care, because we had never been given enough insight into the characters' feelings for each other. 3. The author of the book is by his own admission is a highly privileged man who has never been to a slum. He is no nearer to the realities of Indian poverty than I am (in England). Many of the incidents are the sort of things which regularly crop up in outsiders' views of India. For instance, the mutilation of children to increase their income from begging has been described in the memoirs of dozens of English sahibs. I found many of the episodes stereotypical.
Overall this is a good film and much better than the usual Hollywood nonsense, but it's too clunky and contrived to be classic as some have claimed.