SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE [2008] review

I seemed to have forgotten that SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE was directed by Danny Boyle, which was good as it would otherwise perhaps negatively affected my viewing of it.  I watched SLUMDOG assuming the director was Indian and thus viewing it with a bit more authenticity than I would have if I knew from the start it was Boyle.  Watching the movie in this way I was more forgiving of the optimism and blindly devoted love story that was playing out by the numbers, though quite effectively nonetheless.

This movie uses a three-part flashback style of telling its story, which is a simple waiter (Jamal) playing the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire who explains how he did not cheat to the police with a series of flashbacks showing how the answers to the questions got ingrained into his childhood and adolescent memory.  For the first half of the movie this was a very clever and effective story telling method and I enjoyed the gimmick.  

For the last act we lose the flashbacks mostly and the story more or less plays out in real time when the character is now 18-years old.  The first two-thirds of the movie are better because the child actors were amazing, especially the “youngest Jamal and Salim” actors.  At that age they had an incredibly harsh and hardcore life and existence.

I’ve heard this movie compared to CITY OF GOD, which is an epic 2002 film.  SLUMDOG is not in that league at all, but its emotional gimmicks, if you can accept them, make for a good drama with a predictably (mostly) happy ending.

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