Not worth your time, highly overrated

Rating: 2/10 (1 June 2014)

This is one of those films that are highly overrated. This movie is just plain boring and also at a very low artistic level. There is just nothing worthwhile in this film.
Slumdog is based on the novel by Vikram Swarup, from which it deviates significantly (which Vikram Swarup confirmed). The movie seriously distorts the book. In the book, the protagonist is named Ram Mohammed Thomas, a name that represents both Paganism and Monotheism, and the religion of Ram remains unknown. But the movie changed his name to Jamal Malik, a fully Muslim name. Furthermore, in the movie Jamal's mother is killed by Hindus, while the Hindu god Rama presides over it. In short, the plot was changed into a "communalized", anti-Pagan plot.
As Dr. Koenraad Elst observed in his review of this movie, "the effect is to drive the nail deeper into the coffin of Hinduism's former reputation for tolerance and confirm its newly crafted image as hateful and a threat to non-Hindus. " The movie was thus justifiably criticized also by India watchers Jeanne Devos, François Gautier, and Rajiv Malhotra, and in the review by Salman Rushdie, who didn't like it either.
The director Danny Boyle once said that his boyhood dream was to become a missionary, and that the same spirit still influences him. Boyle also said that he made the film in part because he was unfamiliar with India - and it shows.
It's a disgrace to the Academy that this movie won the Awards, when much better movies with India as a theme have not, like Wes Anderson's excellent "Darjeeling Limited". I also found Boyle's earlier film "Trainspotting" much overrated (watch "Another Day in Paradise" or "Drugstore Cowboys" instead of that crap).