Entertainment

<< Previous   of   Next >> Associated Press/Fox Searchlight  (click to enlarge) Dev Patel (left) and Anil Kapoor in "Slumdog Millionaire."   ADVERTISEMENT   "Slumdog Millionaire" 3 stars Slick: Danny Boyle makes this slick and shallow story pop with all the energy of an expensive TV commercial. The utterly bizarre premise -- we flash back to the horrible life of a Mumbai orphan as he awaits the chance to win big on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" -- gives the film a certain fascination, and it works hard as a crowd-pleaser. (In English and Hindi, with English subtitles.) Rated: R rating is for violence, language, subject matter Now showing: Harvard Exit   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Friday, November 21, 2008 'Slumdog Millionaire' is good, but hype's excessive By Robert Horton Herald Movie Critic Critics who see movies at film festivals sometimes suffer from the exotic disease known as festival inflation, where the excitement of seeing a movie first, with a hyped-up crowd, causes otherwise sensible people to lose their heads. I can think of no other explanation for some of the rapturous early notices about Danny Boyle's "Slumdog Millionaire," a slick, shallow, reasonably enjoyable potboiler being tipped as an Oscar front-runner. Well, not so fast. This movie plays audiences like an electric violin, but some people might just find themselves resisting the combination of manipulative storytelling and squalid setting. For starters, the concept is one of the weirdest plots seen in recent memory, scripted by Simon Beaufoy from a novel by Vikas Swarup. Jamal, a young errand boy in a Mumbai (i.e., Bombay) call center, is answering questions on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" As it happens, each of the answers he gets right leads us to a flashback to some horrific part of his youth as a poor orphan in the slums. As if that weren't enough, Jamal is also being beaten by the Mumbai police, who are certain that an uneducated kid like him couldn't possibly know the answers on the TV show without cheating. (Jeez, they take game-show honesty seriously in India.) This utterly bizarre set-up allows Boyle, the director of "Trainspotting," an opportunity to create his brand of handsomely mounted squalor. Jamal's boyhood is modeled on "Oliver Twist," and there's even an evil Fagin character who recruits children for an army of beggars. Jamal has a protective/abusive older brother, and a lifelong love in Latika, a girl lost to the slums. They are played as adults (well, older teenagers) by Madhur Mittal and Freida Pinto. Dev Patel plays Jamal, although he shares considerable screen time with two younger actors in the same role. Amid Boyle's hustle and glow, the only actors who really stand out are Anil Kapoor, as the smarmy TV host, and Irfan Khan ("A Mighty Heart"), as the police inspector. Boyle (who collaborated here with co-director Loveleen Tandan) is an unpredictable filmmaker. His sci-fi picture "Sunshine" was a cool voyage, and "Millions" again showed a windfall coming to a kid, thus proving Boyle was no stranger to conventional happy endings. "Slumdog" supposedly conjures the energy of Bollywood (indulging in a song-and-dance number at the very end), although it is closer in spirit to a really expensive TV commercial. I had fun watching it, with disbelief held firmly in check. But more than that? Please. READER COMMENTS Be the first to comment. You must be a registered user and verify your e-mail address to post comments to blogs or articles on HeraldNet. To register, click here. To read other terms and conditions, click here. Log out

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