visual equivalent of a mouth-watering dessert

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2009)

Slumdog Millionaire lacks something, depth maybe, so i cannot really call it a masterpiece, but that doesn't take away the glaring fact that this is easily, DEFINITELY, one of the most enjoyable movies (IMO) in recent memory! And whatever it is that it falls short of, it's more than compensated for by its overflowing vitality and panache.
This movie simply was mesmerizing,. slumdog millionaire is the visual equivalent of a mouth-watering dessert. An inundation of flavors, arresting and enslaving like an incipient addiction. The cinematography is so good you forget that what is being shown are images of squalor, poverty, harassment and violence. The kinetic editing, the music, the MTV-style vignettes, (even the bollywood sequence at the end!) It's funny, it's heartbreaking and it has a message that we all could use in desperate times. Everything just fits together nicely and effortlessly in this one.
Jamal Malik is an 18 year old Call Center agent in Mumbai, orphaned by a bloody riot in their destitute neighborhood, --(where the police is more interested in gambling than in peace and order)-- joins the popular game show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." Jamal Malik, minimally educated and a slumdog (from the slums), was able to answer each and every question in the game and by the end of the show managed to get to the very last question for a whopping 20,000,000 rupees. The show's host is outraged and becomes suspicious of Jamal, he calls the police to detain Jamal and interrogate and torture him for his "presumed" methods of cheating.... only, Jamal didn't cheat, and he isn't a genius either,. from the interrogation in the police station Jamal narrates to his captors how he knew of the answers--
Each and every question in the game represents an episode in his life, these were not book-knowledge, or school lectures, but life experiences that had a rather unusual connection to the game's questions...
So by the end of the game, we will have known Jamal's life, family, love and his real motivation for joining the show.