Definitely overrated

Rating: 2/10 (12 September 2011)

Slumdog Millionaire is visually dazzling in spite of showing some of the filthiest possible locales. The soundtrack by A. R. Rahman, though nothing special to Indian audiences, is vastly different from the typical Hollywood fare. The story of two brothers, growing up under similar circumstances but making very different choices and ending up at very different places, is interesting. If you haven't seen it, go see it. The rest of the review contains what might be considered spoilers.
In the opening scene of the movie, we find a young man of limited education, Jamal Malik, being tortured by cops in their attempt to squeeze a confession out of him. His crime? - he is one step away from winning the maximum prize money in the popular television quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati (or Who Wants to be a Millionaire), a feat that the police is convinced he could not have accomplished without cheating. Jamal doesn't confess. Instead he takes us through a whirlwind tour of his life, each episode explaining how he knew the answer to each of the questions he was asked in the show.
Or that's what the film-makers would have us believe. How having heard a friend sing a certain song could enable someone to also figure out who wrote that song (the "correct" answer to which is incidentally incorrect) or how the knowledge that a certain kind of revolver has "Colt" as part of its name could enable him to figure out that a Mr.Colt and not a Mr.Revolver invented the revolver are things that neither the cop nor the viewer is allowed to ask. Perhaps the viewer is also not allowed to ask how some slum-children could trespass into airport runways to play cricket (no security? no walls and barb-wired fences? why would they want to do that anyway? was there no other place to play?), or why a cop would chase these little trouble-makers not only out of the airport but all the way to their homes, or whether anyone would ever jump into a pile of you-know-what, or why hardened criminals would depend on beggars for their source of income instead of the usual murder, extortion, drugs, prostitution, illegal arms and smuggling, or why a prostitute would resent living comfortably as a rich gangster's girlfriend, or why no one panics or shouts or calls the police or even notices when several gangsters chase a woman through a busy railway station in broad daylight openly flaunting their guns and knives until they finally drag her into a car and drive away. There's a scene where a rope is tied to a boy's ankle and another boy holds the other end of the rope while standing on the roof of a moving train and lowers the first boy upside-down so he can steal food from the window. Now, why would anyone attempt this Mission Impossible inspired stunt when they can simply walk past the window when the train is stopping at a station and achieve the same result?
The less I say about the difficulty of the questions asked the better. Living in India and not knowing who Amitabh Bachchan is, is like living in America and not knowing who Michael Jackson is. Asking an Indian what the Hindu God Ram has in His hand is like asking an American how Jesus died. Never mind the fact that if he didn't know how Ram looked, he couldn't have figured out he was looking at Ram when he saw a boy painted blue. And the final question? Oh, please! Any 8-year-old would know the answer to that one! And why was the show telecast live again? Every time someone won the maximum amount in the real Kaun Banega Crorepati in India, it was in the news and the promos days before the show was telecast. So it's common knowledge that these shows are not shown live. The real host of KBC, Mr.Amitabh Bachchan also never makes fun of the contestants and goes out of the way to make them feel comfortable.
Nevertheless, I can understand why the movie was so popular. At a time when financial markets were crashing and people were losing their jobs, Slumdog gave people hope. It told them to stop thinking with their heads and believe in their hearts that by some miraculous turn of events, everything will be alright.