Imagine you’re a small Indian boy in a school in the slums of Mumbai. In class, you sit with your brother as your teacher asks you a question about the Three Musketeers. This one element will be the defining factor of whether you will win millions of dollars on an Indian game show. I suppose it also has some significance to the plot but neither the connection or the plot are ever made clear enough to get invested. So, imagine you’re still this Indian boy. You are in your teens now. You get on “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” and you must remember events from your past to answer each question. What a clever PLOT DEVICE you have come up with to tell the story of how you lost your one true love. Finally, you are down to your last question. One question away from the money and WOAH, surprise surprise it’s the question about the Three Musketeers. But you don’t care if you answer correctly, you just want the love of your life back. Well guess what, you get both. You also win best original song for a motion picture at the Oscars. Well, I have one thing to say to you, “Jai-ho, really?”
One thing I must first get off my chest is that I did not enjoy Slumdog Millionaire and thought it exploited a story with massive potential by over emphasizing how cultural it was and using grab-bag cinematographic techniques to come off as stylized and meaningful. In fact, a number of people who I discussed the movie with just after seeing it thought it was an indie film. Such trickery cannot be perpetuated in Hollywood. Essentially, Danny Boyle wished to make a movie that American’s would see in an attempt to become more cultured. Profits, Profits, and more profits ensued; as did recognition. However, I asked a friend of mine who was born in Mumbai and he noted no similarities between the conditions he saw in the slums and the conditions shown in the film. Also, the Bollywood-esque ending they try to stuff in for good measure only seemed desperate and based of British stereotypes of a former annex of their empire.
In reality, Dev Patel is highly lacking in the acting department. He maintains one face the entire film. The face of a man who has just seen blood in his urine. It makes you question how he was championed for such a powerful performance when 45% of it involved desperately shouting “LATIKA!” The other 55% of “Slumdog’s”, was performed by another actor. A child actor who was, in fact, promised a trust fund as payment for the film but received a total of $118 and was ostracized from the film’s party before post-production even began. But, lets get back to Patel. Patel was seen as a break out actor; however, he was already a main character in a popular British show for teenagers called “Skins”. This show is the British equivalent to Degrassi but with more nudity. As for the brother character in the film, his acting was the high point of the movie at some points. The same goes for the acting of the host of “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” However, these were the two most unlovable characters in the film and I had this constant urge to hit both in the face with a shovel after every line they said.
Danny Boyle made a thoroughly non-triumphant film, which is rare for this seasoned British director. He’s most known for his film’s Trainspotting and 28 Day’s Later, films that if you asked most people, most people would respond that they quite enjoyed those movies. The same is true for Slumdog. Most people you would ask would say they thought it was an excellent movie which is where I simply get confused. The story is somewhat new however, the acting is lacking, the dialogue wanes the whole movie through, and the cinematography is more based on stylish trickery than anything else. So why did it when an Oscar for everything. Danny Boyle has produced the penultimate film to have so little but win so much. As for the writing, it felt like everyone involved in drafting the script had only worked on either The Sands of Time or Fear Factor; their sole purpose was to saturate the film with cheap emotion wrenching dialogue (every line spoken between Jamal and Latika) or vomit inducing scenarios (the toilet scene or eye dissolving scene). Well I'll I can say is good job Danny Boyle! You had me vomiting the whole movie through!
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