Slumdog Millionaire

Drew Dahle's Thoughts:
I had a kinda interesting experience leading up to seeing Slumdog Millionaire. I heard about it probably halfway through last year and I like Danny Boyle generally (I’m a big fan of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later) and it seemed like an odd little story so I was intrigued. As the film went to festivals and so forth people were raving about it and I heard bits and pieces about it, like there was a fantastical Bollywood finish where the cast sings and dances. I was intrigued even more thinking this would be a self-aware take on the Bollywood-style filmmaking fantasy. Then I started seeing clips and the trailer for the film and not being too impressed I tempered my expectations quite a bit. When I finally did see the film, judging by my initial expectations the film is pretty underwhelming but judging by my second set of expectations the film was okay.
There is one scene in the film that really maximizes the potential of the film and that is when youngest Jamal is locked in an outhouse when his favorite celebrity touches down in a helicopter nearby. He pulls a picture of the star from clothes and jumps in the sea of shit beneath him taking care to reach the picture as far above his head as possible to keep it untarnished. He then runs towards the helicopter, his poop-drenched body shoving its way through the crowd and finally succeeding in getting his picture signed. When he does this he screams in triumph. It’s a great sequence, full of energy, humor and something weirdly fantastical. If the whole film carried this essence it would have been a great film, the problem is that scene is the only scene in the film that carries that essence.
Slumdog Millionaire isn’t a bad film but a number of problems beset it. One of the most glaring to me is the entire cast is out-acted by 8 year olds. The youngest Jamal is infinitely more magnetic and talented than the constantly blank-faced Dev Patel (oldest Jamal) who seems to be getting all the credit (and award nominations). The portion of the story with the youngest incarnations of the characters contains some of magic the film is striving for. However, that portion of the film is only about 25-30 minutes. I’m pretty confident that if the film had been written for only those young versions of the characters the film would have fared much better. Because of this I started out engaged in the film but by the end I had nothing invested in the film. I could have cared less whether Jamal gets the girl, in fact I would have been more impressed if he didn’t. At least it would have shaken up the obviousness of the storytelling by not delivering the easily predictable ending.
Of course, I can’t blame the whole thing on the actors. The script by Simon Beaufoy is probably mostly to blame because, while it as the classic Dickens orphan-transforming-himself-to-succeed-in-the-end thing, it is devoid of the self-aware spark that it takes to pull a fantasy like this off. The plotline of the film is entirely ridiculous which isn’t a bad thing by itself but the world that is created for the plotline (with the exception of the scene described earlier) is much, much too serious for it to have any integrity or plausibility. The film is caught somewhere between wanting to be a fantastical fable and wanting to be a realistic depiction of Mumbai slums. This vacillation between the two routes causes it to go nowhere worthwhile. It somehow just ends up being a generic Hollywood tale, but set in India.
We’re dropped into the harsh (no irony there) world of the slums, apparently run by men inexplicably making a fortune off of child beggars, gangsters and gameshow hosts. Jamal then proceeds to answer every question correctly on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, convince corrupt cops he wasn’t cheating by telling them his life story, and his dick brother, who hasn’t a nice bone in his body the whole story, all of a sudden martyrs himself so Jamal and Latika can be together forever. To quote The Big Lebowski, “The story is ludicrous.” Unlike The Big Lebowski’s ludicrous story which is very much in tune with how ludicrous it is, Slumdog’s ludicrous story seems to be entirely unaware it’s so ludicrous. It seems that that right there is the fateful reason the film fails to achieve greatness. The film really needed a sense of irony or even just a sense of humor about itself for it to work as a fantasy but it sorely lacks that essential element.
Furthermore, I’m a fan of Danny Boyle (who directed) and Chris Dickens (who edited this, as well as, Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) but I wasn’t too taken with their work on this film. Their aim is obvious; imbue the film with a highly energetic buzz. It doesn’t quite work. For all the kinetics and quick cuts, the style suffers from a certain falseness. Instead of capturing and harnessing the raw energy of Mumbai, the film’s “energy” feels very transparently produced, glossy and, frankly, phony. The film’s score (by A.R. Rahman) suffers from this even more so. Aside from one piece of pretty good music, the pumped up electro-global sounds sound corny and fake. It sounds more like I’m listening to the radio in a Cruis’n World video game than I am hearing a film score. Maybe it’s just because I knew who M.I.A. was prior to seeing this, but her inclusion in the soundtrack was confusing. She’s Sri Lankan for one, and her presence does not give off any sort of Mumbai or India vibe; it seems more like cross-marketing than anything. And “Latika’s Theme” is just unbearably awful and it gets played over and over again. Also, after all, that “fantastical Bollywood finish” I was waiting for is actually the two stars and others dancing (not even singing) in a subway station over the end credits. It was stupid. The filmmakers’ thought process astounds me. At this point your film has ended, and now you make a half-assed toss to “Indian culture”? Whatever…
Alright, alright. With as much criticizing as I’ve done, I liked the movie okay. At least I think I did. I may have just become aware of how much disdain for the movie I actually have.