Slumdog Millionaire

[bonanzataz]

Did anyone else think the gameshow host looked quite a bit like Luis Guzman?? 

why? because he was brown and had a funny accent? fucking racist...

[Gold Trumpet]

A nice coincidence I watched this while reading Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Both works deal with growing up in India, but both also have similar types of stories. Midnight's Children deals with larger ideas of India's independence, but the novel is mainly superficial. Rushdie's ability to craft and weave such an intricate story that brings together so many familiar story archetypes into something that feels creative and whole is the main reward.

Slumdog Millionaire has a similar reward. The story is recognizable and if dissected from a plot only viewpoint, is completely predictable. Someone could say the fact Jamal's life goes in chronological order according to the questions on the game show is a gimmick, but the film doesn't make this great coincidence a true theme at all. Magnolia made all the coincidences of 82 into something more and drove the film to look for meaning out of it, but Slumdog Millionaire just focuses on the chance and fate that Jamal and Lapika were meant to be together. It's a simple theme and the film expands on it enough to make the whole film feel organic and complete.

The films seems to be purposely superficial. The meaning lies in the care and interest you take from the filmmaking and how it elicits the story and very simple theme. But other great films are superficial and make you concentrate just on the filmmaking. 8 1/2 is one of the best films ever, but has an empty story with even emptier themes and obvious symbolism. It's just the filmmaking creates an experience that is pretty masterful. Slumdog Millionaire isn't 8 1/2, but it hits all the right buttons for what it wants to do.

[©brad]

i was really excited about slumdog until the backlash came, and then there was the inevitable backlash against the backlash and i got excited again, but now i'm pretty sure that, judging by what many of you and some friends i trust have concluded, it's going to be manipulative and contrived and fun but ultimately not worthy.

I LOVED IT. take that, stupid cbrad from a few days ago!

remember kids, it's okay to like something that's popular.

[ElPandaRoyal]

I didn't like this that much. It starts kind of great, and it's a very good idea, but not a moment too late, the screenplay opens the Great Book of the Cliché and it all downhill from there. I mean, look at those villains: the first is dark and sinister and the second one is a fat buffoon who watches criquet (?!) on TV and acts like Archie Bunker without being even remotely funny. The romance between Jamal and the girl never feels strong enough to make me care, and only Jamal's brother had a good treatment, character wise. There's also a lot of fluff with the visuals, but they didn't distract me from a poor and banal story. The darker scenes were good, not overplayed, but the rest is very underwhelming.

[Gamblour.]

remember kids, it's okay to like something that's popular.

And it's also equally ok to dislike something that's popular but not because it's popular.

[Stefen]

The romance between Jamal and the girl never feels strong enough to make me care

This was pretty much my biggest beef with the film. I think I would have liked it a lot more if there was a reason that Jamal searched for Latika other than the fact that she's really hot. You ask Jamal why he's so obseseed with her and he'd say, "Because she's fucking hot!"

[Kal]

The romance between Jamal and the girl never feels strong enough to make me care

This was pretty much my biggest beef with the film. I think I would have liked it a lot more if there was a reason that Jamal searched for Latika other than the fact that she's really hot. You ask Jamal why he's so obseseed with her and he'd say, "Because she's fucking hot!"

I think there may have been a longer version of the film where they bond as kids was a bit more established. As hot as she is when we see her all grown up, the fucker had been searching for her for many years. At least when he found her she was hot, imagine after 10 years of looking for the girl if she was fucking ugly he would kill himself.

[picolas]

this has become my Crash. the more love people show for it the more i find myself hating it for all its shallowness. elpanda sums it up pretty well.

[Gold Trumpet]

The romance between Jamal and the girl never feels strong enough to make me care

This was pretty much my biggest beef with the film. I think I would have liked it a lot more if there was a reason that Jamal searched for Latika other than the fact that she's really hot. You ask Jamal why he's so obseseed with her and he'd say, "Because she's fucking hot!"

I think there may have been a longer version of the film where they bond as kids was a bit more established. As hot as she is when we see her all grown up, the fucker had been searching for her for many years. At least when he found her she was hot, imagine after 10 years of looking for the girl if she was fucking ugly he would kill himself.

I never qualified the relationship between Latika and Jamal as a standard romance. The inherent need for Jamal to find her seems to be his instinct to find a surrogate member of his family. His relationship with his older brother was strained from the beginning and while he trusts him somewhat, he sees the ideal more in Latika. She has no bad intensions and he feels protective about her because he took her in from the rain when no one else would. Then Jamal's actions is what brought her to that manager of children and he also feels responsible for leaving her with him alone. Considering he has no one else but his brother I find the need within him to find her again to be quite natural.

The film develops the story by showing each brother find their own interest and ambition. With the older brother it is power and fame, but with Jamal it is to just find someone he felt responsible for. As both grew older they had to develop interests and ambitions for something. What happens in the film was to be expected. And the bond Jamal developed with Latika came before hormones, but it's natural after a lot of time for romantic urges to develop. I just don't think romance was ever the basis of Jamal's interest in Latika. It just became the result of everything.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

this has become my Crash. the more love people show for it the more i find myself hating it for all its shallowness. elpanda sums it up pretty well.

Thank you picolas.
Thank you ElPandaRoyal.
Thank you Gamblour.

You revived some hope for Xixax.

[©brad]

remember kids, it's okay to like something that's popular.

And it's also equally ok to dislike something that's popular but not because it's popular.

of course. but you have to admit, when a film reaches a certain point of popularity, the cynic in you goes in wanting it to fail. the film starts 2 touchdowns down before it even starts (forgive the poor football metaphor) because your immediate instinct is to not want to like it. i'm not saying any of the criticisms presented in this thread aren't without merit. there certainly were parts in slumdog that i could label as "oh come on" but i don't know, i was in a good mood, and it made me feel good. maybe it's impossible to do, but ideally, one should watch a film without any preconceived notions or agendas.

the story is so cliche argument is kind of weak, because the wrestler is equally if not more cliche, and yet we're lauding that film as a masterpiece. from a story/structure perspective, i thought slumdog was far more original. character development wise, well that's something else. i just think we (myself included b/c i'm guilty of all of this) unfairly apply different standards of critique for different films based on things that shouldn't matter. 

[picolas]

what separates the wrestler from slumdog is the genuine motivation, the genuine characters, the genuine performances among other things. dev patel STUNK. i couldn't root for him because he made the character so bloody infantile. another actor could've made that role ten times more interesting. instead it's sooo labored and hoing and humming.. slumdog reminds you of its clichedness constantly by throwing in extraneous shit like "it is written." the whole destiny theme is so tacked-on and not uplifting at all. fuck fate. jamal won because he was cunning, good-hearted etc. but don't give me the 'destiny' message. like, anyone could say that about anything. if anything the idea of destiny in this movie detracts from jamal's good points as a character. the millionaire host also turned in a shit performance but he had very little to work with. he's written like a mustache-stroking evil guy with such unbelievable motivation so that's what we get. (the more money jamal wins, the more successful the show. have you never considered the possibility of someone winning?? wtf??). i didn't want this to fail. i wanted to like it. but i didn't for the above and several other reasons.

[private witt]

slumdog reminds you of its clichedness constantly

This is exactly what I predicted I would take from this film if I sat through it.  Thanks for taking one for the team and giving me all the warning I need to never watch this melodrama.

[Gold Trumpet]

what separates the wrestler from slumdog is the genuine motivation, the genuine characters, the genuine performances among other things. dev patel STUNK. i couldn't root for him because he made the character so bloody infantile. another actor could've made that role ten times more interesting.

His character was meant to be infantile. If he was filled with any sense of bravado or toughness he would have gotten Lakita back earlier in other ways. He goes on the game show to attract her attention because he feels that is the only thing he can even do. He tries other measures and fails when it seems like an ounce of courage in certain situations would have gotten her back. Like the moment when his brother is pointing a gun at him in the doorway. The gun was close to his head he could have ducked out of the way and fought his brother off, but he didn't have that physical courage. Lakita recognized that so stepped in to save the situation by relenting herself.

slumdog reminds you of its clichedness constantly by throwing in extraneous shit like "it is written." the whole destiny theme is so tacked-on and not uplifting at all. fuck fate. jamal won because he was cunning, good-hearted etc. but don't give me the 'destiny' message. like, anyone could say that about anything. if anything the idea of destiny in this movie detracts from jamal's good points as a character.

I have no idea how being good hearted had anything to do with him answering the questions, but Jamal certainly wasn't very smart. I think the point of the film is that he had a short lifetime to think about certain events he had experienced over and over again. His main life events were tied to how he found Lakita and continuously lost her. And because he went on the show just to get Lakita's attention, doesn't the fact the questions measure up to his experiences of her so well speak to some purpose of fate?

I understand if you just didn't buy into the scenario. That's fine. The film is driven by a first person perspective and either you identify with the events of Jamal or you don't. The film never takes on anyone else's experience in the story so belief in the integrity and redeemability of the main character is vital. I also think the first person aspect of the narrative is what makes the film destroy a lot of its story cliches. The energy of the style is florescent through out the film. Images appear and then evaporate so quickly it feels like we are privy to Jamal's conscious mind during a strenuous situation. The constant use of this style of storytelling through out is provocative.

I had no idea what to expect from the film. As soon as I noticed the high energy of the style I was afraid I would hate it because at the time I was battling a huge headache, but everything the film intended me to feel and care about washed over me.

[Gamblour.]

remember kids, it's okay to like something that's popular.

And it's also equally ok to dislike something that's popular but not because it's popular.

of course. but you have to admit, when a film reaches a certain point of popularity, the cynic in you goes in wanting it to fail. the film starts 2 touchdowns down before it even starts (forgive the poor football metaphor) because your immediate instinct is to not want to like it. i'm not saying any of the criticisms presented in this thread aren't without merit. there certainly were parts in slumdog that i could label as "oh come on" but i don't know, i was in a good mood, and it made me feel good. maybe it's impossible to do, but ideally, one should watch a film without any preconceived notions or agendas.

No, see, the optimist in me went in wanting the film to be good. The great thing about this board is that we sort of are our own sociological experiement, where we can observe shifts in opinion based on a film's popularity, so I'm aware of the backlash backlash. We all saw it with Juno. What we can't have now is backlash backlash backlash. Umm...

My point is that, yes, this film is incredibly popular. Yes, popularity makes a lot of people want to hate the film more. But for those of you who like it (and I'm not trying to rain shit on your parade, I know a bunch of people who want to fight me, their words, over not absolutely loving this movie. I know it made them feel really really good inside), you can't apply its own popularity as the reason why we don't like it. pic and others have done a good job of enumerating their complaints, none of which include the fact that the film is simply popular.

I think it's not going in to the movie that brings out one's inner cynic, it's coming out of the movie and wondering what movie everyone else saw. I'm glad, really glad, that people here both love and dislike the film, because it means that we're all right. The people who love it aren't crazy and the people who hate aren't crazy either.

I had a huge conversation with my wife's coworker about this film. He loved the film, was one of the one's who said he wanted to fight me. And we got to the point in discussing it that we realized the film is a union of social realism and fabulist storytelling. And for some people, a lot of people, this combination works. You get this gritty perspective mixed with heart-strings-tugging narrative, and people seem to love it. We thought maybe it had to do with the Obama win, an underdog in his own right getting this big win, it's given people an optimism and this movie helps them relive it. That's a bit of pedestrian generalization and analysis, but I think the idea fits. However, if that article about Indian audiences not liking the film for what it ignores about reality there, there's where the fabulism fails. I was telling him that the film made me want to see the Indian "Battle of Algiers" or their "Umberto D." The social realism intrigued me, not the bullshit Millionaire story.