Dec
1
This is a film you’re probably going to be hearing a lot about if you haven’t already. It’s playing to sold-out audiences here in L.A. and expanding to other markets in the coming weeks. I saw it in a packed house a couple weekends ago and not even “Twilight” with all of its non-sex could peel off this movie’s business.
“Slumdog Millionaire” is about Jamal, a contestant on India’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” He’s close to taking home the top prize when he’s arrested and aggressively interrogated by the police. Jamal’s a child of the slums, someone who couldn’t possibly know the answers on “Millionaire,” so he must be cheating? But, through a series of flashbacks, it’s revealed how Jamal’s punishing childhood experiences actually taught him all the useless trivia he needed to know. That being said, I knew the answer to the final question at the film’s climax — w00t!
Co-directed by Danny Boyle (”Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later”) and Loveleen Tandan, “Slumdog Millionaire” is Charles Dickens by way of Bollywood. The torture and children in peril scenes are difficult to watch — the family seated next to me walked actually walked out — but this is also one of the most emotionally satisfying movies you’ll see this year. And it’s not like this movie is “Hostel,” either. Hollywood movies are just so sanitized, so safe and boring, mainstream audiences are physically incapable of sitting through anything that challenges them. Yet they’re missing out if they skip “Slumdog.”
The film isn’t all doom and gloom. Boyle brings plenty of humor to the proceedings — a scene with a young Jamal in a public toilet recalls a sequence from “Trainspotting” — and the dance number over the closing credits has you walking out the theater with a smile on your face. Though fantastical in the context of the film, it’s nonetheless emotionally rewarding — a little bit of what they call “magical realism,” which is sorely lacking from the latest bit of product that hits screens every Friday. What I wouldn’t give to have seen a similar dance number at the end of “The Dark Knight.”
This review comes two weeks late, since this is a difficult movie to talk about without getting too hyperbolic. I’ve gone through a few drafts. I find it’s much easier to review movies than films, since I don’t want to sound like those annoying critics who review movies in soundbites, custom made for slapping on posters and newspaper ads, rather than in anything resembling depth. I think the best review I heard for “Slumdog Millionaire” was from this random woman sitting near me in the audience. When a friend of hers asked her how she liked it, she made a noise that sounded like she was either clearing her throat or having an orgasm — maybe even both. I think that about sums up my feelings as well.
-Brad Lohan
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