(Almost) perfect

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2015)

With the exception of some awkwardly bad scenes, and some exaggeration in the depiction of India's poverty, this movie deserves all the praise it gets, and it's actually quite good.
I personally like the fact that this movie is so Indian. No Hollywood star. Only Indian actors. The main character, the guy who plays Jamal, is quite good. He looks very convincing. He does not seem to be acting, he seems to be telling his real life's events. The actors who play young Jamal and young Salim are also very good, though I'd say they are more captivating than talented (after all, they were just children).
Now, what was bad about this movie that made it deserve a 9, rather than a 10? The torture scenes were totally unnecessary in my opinion. Maybe the director wanted to show how cruel the world can be to a "slumdog" boy who happens to be intelligent, however, to start the movie with such a scene was utterly awkward, to say the least. Other thing I particularly disliked was some scenes of total and merciless cruelty against children, which were of course realistic but did not add to the story, at least not in my eyes.
But this movie has some positive aspects that far outdo the negative ones. First off, as I already said, the acting was quite good. None of the actors were bad, but the "hero" was the best in my opinion. Quite simply, he "was" Jamal. He did not seem to be acting or pretending. Just like every good actor does- he convinces you that what he's living is real. The guy who played Jamal's brother as a young man was also good, as was the girl who played old Latika.
Second, the storyline is captivating, you can't help but thinking what you'd do if you were in those boy's places. The fact that Jamal's brother "betrayed" him and, in the end, helped to save his life was grand. The brother's death scene almost led me to tears.
Third and last but not least, the film has two aspects that all great movies should have: fantasy and a bit of romance. Certainly, it's highly improbable that a guy could ever win so much money answering random questions whose answers he simply "happened" to know. This is the fantasy aspect. You have to stop being realistic sometimes, this is a movie, after all. As for the romance, the movie turned out to be a modern love story set in India. Nothing really surprising or new to that, and I must say, contrary to a movie like Titanic, here the romance does not make the movie cheesy or sappy. On the contrary, in the end you actually realize you want the young couple to be together.
Now, about the last scene, the "Bollywood" scene: some people complain it's cheesy. I think it's fun, to say the least. Surely, the director of the film wanted to make a homage to India's cinema, and he quite succeeded. After all those two went through in their lives, what did they have to lose, why not dance, like children, happy simply for being alive? There's nothing sappy about that, though I know such a ending may look a bit awkward to someone not accustomed to Indian movies.
All in all, I'm quite happy with this movie, and I'll certainly watch it again as soon as I can. I am sure it deserved all the recognition it received.