Shame on you Oscars

Rating: 1/10 (14 July 2009)

After seeing this movie, I think members of the Oscars should be arrested and interrogated for suspicion of fraud. As others have pointed out, this film is part of a continuing trend of the Oscars trying to shove mediocre movies down our throats. It is as though the intentions of this movie were good enough to make it a "great" movie.
First off, this movie asks way too much of its audience as far as suspension of belief. This is fine with a sci-fi or horror movies, but for a highly touted Oscar winner that claims to be a gritty drama portraying an often ignored part of a big society, it really goes overboard. The coincidences that you are asked to accept are just beyond human comprehension. I used to watch the American version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and to suggest that an uneducated homeless guy could win because just about every question is related to something obscure that happened a long time ago in his life, and which he happens to conveniently remember, is just ludicrous. Please, the coincidence of the little kid in God Rama custom was just laughable, and when movie critics decide they hate a movie, this is the kind of stuff they pounce on, but in this case, a clear example of complete amateurism is ignored.
And don't get me started about the TV host character. He blatantly belittles the contestant about being poor, again and again and again, with no subtlety whatsoever, just straight out laughs in his face while millions watch on TV. He is part of a collective that makes taking this film seriously completely impossible.
Somewhere between 20 to 30 minutes into this movie you realize how the rest of the movie is going to go. Those who you think will end up together, do. The characters you expect to die, do. The only thing that kept my interest was the notion that, since this was a critically acclaimed movie and a foreign movie, they would not cop out and do a Hollywood ending. I guess I was wrong. And maybe it's an Indian tradition, but what was the deal with ending the movie with a completely irrelevant dance number??? I know they did something similar in "There's Something About Mary", but that was a comedy!! Can you imagine a dance number at the end of "Crash"?
Another thing that bugged me was the so called love story. It was a big part of the second half of the movie and it just destroyed any sliver of credibility the plot still had at that point. The main character suffers from what I like to call "Hugh Grant Syndrome". This is when a movie gives us a male character who has a nonsensical, and self deprecating, obsession with a woman who obviously doesn't like him and even goes out of her way to hurt him just to show him how much she's not into him, but then the guy, against all logic, persist and eventually wins her. These movies have the audacity to asks us to see these stalker, unhealthy, relationships as "romantic" and "endearing" when any adult with half a brain knows that women like this (or any person for that matter) don't change over night and that the relationship is already doomed. The girl in this movie, except briefly when they were playing around as kids, never showed the same level or type of interest that the guy does through out the last half! She always followed whatever would allow her to survive. The only time she actually seems to want to be with him as much as he does with her is when he has fame and money. This is supposed to be romantic?
I decided to see this movie, despite the obvious red flag that this was hyped by the Oscars, because I wanted to see something different, something that would give me more insight into what I regard as a fascinating culture. In spite of the great cinematography and look of the film, all I got was a bunch of Western stereotypes wrapped in a silly and substandard plot. This was the best movie of 2008?!?! Really?!?! I thought "The Wrestler" was a better movie, and it wasn't even nominated!!!! Only the Hollywood elites don't see the big disconnect between their taste in movies and that of movie fans. In a move that reeks of desperation they are adding more nominees to the Oscars categories in an attempt to keep the ceremonies' ratings from going down the toilet even more. They don't get it, it's not about quantity, it's about quality, or in this case, lack of quality.