Why Such Praise?

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2009)

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One movie that won't be on my year-end best of 2008 list is Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. What's surprising to me is that I might be the only critic on the web to not have it on their list. After watching it last night, I want to know: why all the love for a routine melodrama dressed up as something exotic?
As you expect from Boyle, SM is exceptionally stylish, fluid and kinetic. The more I think about why so many people love this movie, the more I come back to how expertly the film is crafted. It is a hyper film, bristling with action, drama, emotion and energy. India makes for a truly epic backdrop, with splashes of color, clutter and exotic wonder. With the languages breaking in and out of English, Hindi and other regional dialects, SM feels like a completely foreign, yet utterly accessible movie. In nearly ever superficial way imaginable, SM strives to be a palatable form of culture shock. Based on its success, it seems Boyle has succeeded.
For the first half of the film, the story's winding structure deliberately keeps you guessing, your head spinning amidst a whirlwind of backstory and puzzling present tense. But by about the halfway mark, I found my bearings, and once I did, the artifice of the film started to reveal itself. At this point, a very simple, but (potentially) revealing question popped into my head: if this whole thing was set in the USA with familiar actors and locations, wouldn't it just be another syrupy sweet romantic melodrama?
Perhaps the real culprit was when the story and character's transitioned from childhood to maturity. With the first half of SM reminiscent of the adventures of Satyajit Ray's Apu, I was swept up and completely sucked in by young Jamal's struggles. But once Jamal was transformed into a young man, the events unraveled into a predictable teenage soap opera, with plot lines seemingly plucked from The O.C. or Gossip Girl.
By the time the end credits started to roll and the cast of actors broke into a choreographed song and dance routine, I felt like Boyle was mocking me. For a movie that starts out with such a kick to the gut in terms of gritty, gutter level realism, for it to end on such a completely phony level, I can't help but feel Boyle pulled the wool over everyone's eyes. Perhaps that's the point.
It's no secret SM is a fairy tale, furthermore, much of it is lifted right out of the pages of Dickins' Oliver Twist. The film also references Puccini's Tosca, a three-act opera considered by many to be the most dramatic of all operas. Since Boyle unabashedly acknowledges SM's operatic and dramatic origins, then perhaps his fault is his ambition. His ambition is to turn a contrived melodrama into a social commentary, to thrust into the spotlight the issues of poverty, a developing India, the caste system, globalization and the injustices of capitalism. Big themes indeed, but Boyle is not Brecht and there's nothing post-modern about SM's shamefully manipulative attempt to hide behind realism.
I might be the only critic on the web to dislike this movie...but at least I know why.