Brilliant

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2009)

Took wifey last night to "La Premiere" (the Hoyts version of Gold Class) to see "Slumdog Millionaire". It's pretty similar to "Gold Class" except you get complimentary soft drink and popcorn, which is a pretty sweet deal, but you don't get a reclining chair (which sucks) and you sit with others along a balcony which is overseeing where the poor people sit. One of the highlights of the night was watching the poor people work out how they got upto our seats. I wanted to shout something insulting to them, but I'm pretty humble.
The movie was excellent. It's about a boy named Jamal who gets to the last question of India's version of "Who wants to be a millionaire". The movie starts with him being interrogated the day before he gets to the last question as the host of the show is suspicious he's cheating, especially because of the fact he's a "slumdog". We then retrace Jamal watching the video of the show with the police and him telling stories about how he knew the answers.
It's a brilliant idea for a movie (based upon the book "Q&A") and played out well as the story was so good. The cast is really solid, especially when it follows Jamal, his brother Salim and friend Latika as little children. The cast is really good, the cinematography excellent and the story is a masterpiece. Don't just take my word for it though- it won the Golden Globe for best picture and is No. 34 on the IMDb.com Top 250, 3 spots ahead of "Wall-E".
2 amusing side notes.
1/ About half way through mum rang me (she was babysitting) asking how to get the sound back on as Isaac had fiddled with the TV set-up. Isaac then turned the power off 3 more times, meaning it took me 10mins to explain o mum how to put the TV on, the stereo on, foxtel on and the dvr set-up.
2/ During the week, Andy Maher was on SEN saying how brilliant it was and even the more remarkable was that it was a true story. One caller phoned in and told him it wasn't and that he thought it was based on a book but Andy countered that the book must have been based on a true story. Then another guy phoned in and reviewed the book as he'd recently read it, then Andy started to back down from his stance and seemed rather crestfallen.