Danny Boyle’s new film, Slumdog Millionaire, has emerged as the sure-thing Oscar-winning film of 2008, leaving audiences across America scratching their heads wondering just what the hype is all about.  Every once in a while, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sends out its list of great-yet-also-popular films that give rise to big anticipation across the country. The bonus is that they also generate big ratings on Oscar night.

There’s Chariots of Fire, Platoon, Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. All of these films were massive hits at the box office, and all of them took home the big Best Picture trophy. Others, like 2005’s Crash was a cop-out to the far superior Brokeback Mountain, which many audiences (and Academy members) shunned because of its heavy gay love content.

Slumdog Millionaire is a film about a single question that begs a much greater question. The central plot of the story revolves around Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), who was a winning contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The prevailing inquiry is as simple as it is probing:
How did he know all those answers?

• Did he cheat?
• Did someone feed him answers?
• Is it written?

The spool of the entire film literally hinges on very question. Boyles takes the audience back in time when Jamal was a small child in the slums of Mumbai, into the depths of brothels, the pit of disparate orphans, and knocks on the door of the criminal underground. It’s a compelling, complex plot that is sewn together with cinematic brilliance, all to answer whether or not Jamal cheated on his big day.

As I said before, there is a much more relevant question that must be asked: Is it worth all the hype? Slumdog Millionaire has become a critic’s darling, all for a film that still has yet to find a major American audience. Perhaps it’s because most Americans just aren’t interested.

I find myself in a complex position, not knowing very much about India’s history. I’ve read of the horrid conditions of Mumbai’s slums, and the only real interaction that I have with anyone in that country is the same as that of most Americans – the seemingly ubiquitous call centers (which are also featured in the film).

I’ve used words like “brilliant” and “complex,” most of which might suggest to the reader that I liked this film – but the truth is, I really didn’t. I felt as though I was watching the film through the eyes of a director who looked down on the film’s characters, as if he was trying to do a favor by putting these poor little “slumdog” children and young adults on the big screen.

A film like Slumdog Millionaire could have easily have been educational as it would be entertaining, but alas, there’s little to learn about Indian culture anywhere. In one scene, Jamal literally jumps into a cesspool of human waste to get to a popular star. The star signs his autograph for the fecal-covered child (probably out of sympathy). I can’t help but wonder if this is how Boyle (and the rest of Western society) actually views the world’s second-most populous country.

The rest of the film takes the audience through one con act after another, presenting Jamal and his brother as they go down a dark, twisted path of lies, chases, and deceptions, all of which managed to be carefully knitted into just how Jamal got to his answers in the game show.

The overall cast is brilliant, and even though the major roles are all played by three different actors — each portraying different ages — they are seamless. I did think that the child actors had a little more zest in them than their adult counterparts – but maybe it was just that the characters themselves mellowed out a lot as they got older. Even still, they’re still young and lack much of the angst and zeal that young adults have (I don’t think it’s presumptuous to assume that young adults in India have the same awkwardness as they do here in the US).

Ultimately, Boyle has a particular taste for pulling out the worst in his characters, and seems to be attracted to scripts that pull out all the stops in proving just how dark the human soul can be. There’s a payoff (quite literally) at the end of the film, yet even then, I couldn’t help but feel like I had been conned.

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