Film Review: Slumdog Millionaire

On the day that it was successful at the Golden Globes I went to see the much heralded Slumdog Millionaire. Its premise is not one that really appealed to me but such was the acclaim that I went to see it, expecting to see something amazing.

Jamal (Dev Patel, best known as Anwar from Skins) is a twenty year old from the slums of Mumbai (that's Bombay to those who don't follow world events that closely) who is on the cusp of winning India's version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Due to the fact that Jamal is from the slums, questions are asked as to how such a boy could know the answers and we first meet him being interrogated and tortured by the police. The film then reveals through flashback instances from Jamal's youth which allowed him to answer each question. He has an eventful childhood as he and his more outgoing brother escape a Fagin like child abductor and end up scamming tourists at the Taj Mahal. Escape is a continuing theme in the film as well as long lost and unrequited love - Jamal pursues Latika whom he'd loved and lost as a small boy.

The film can be praised for its direction, editing, and performances of the child actors playing the young Jamal and his brother Kamil. However, I have a number of reservations about the film.

Firstly, the structure of the film is laid out very early on in that each question relates to an incident in Jamal's life. Most viewers will be familiar with Who Wants To Be Millionaire and will be aware that the ultimate goal is to get to the last question and win a million pounds (or 20M rupees as it is in the film). This I found to be an artificial narrative device to propel the drama.

Secondly, and this may come down to personal taste, but the film is essentially a grim (not Grimm) fairytale in that despite its ugly depictions of poverty in India, the film is a fantasy. I prefer the more constant misery found in Tsotsi and City Of God. I felt that, as grim as some of the scenes are, this is something of a postcard representation of poverty. There's a scene in the film where American tourists are conned when looking for the "real" India and I can't help but this that those American tourists are much like the critics and audiences who have fallen for this film. The film, based on the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup, is scripted Simon Beaufoy who wrote The Full Monty. That was a film that was much loved and was praised for it's depiction of the gritty North but I found it to be little more than a well made TV movie which had none of the grit of a Ken Loach film. This is a far better film than The Full Monty but shares its essentially light tone.

Knowing that Jamal would have to answer the final question I found myself hoping that he would get there quicker and that the film was about twenty minutes longer than it needed to be. Phil French of The Observer rightly describes it as Dickensian. This is right because it shared Dickens light and slightly romantic touch. This is not a bad film but it's nowhere near as good as some people will have you believe.