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While the action fares slightly better than character development; this absorbing blockbuster deserves to be a hit.

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Full of clunky CGI and uninspired performances, this film is completely devoid of humour and heart.

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While occasionally opting for cheap laughs, this romantic comedy is entertaining, warm and feels surprisingly rooted in real life.

The Kids Are All Right

Driven by excellent performances, this entertaining film provides a fresh view of modern family life.

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Slumdog Millionaire (Film)

by Colin Fraser | December 16, 2008 11:58 | Edited December 16, 2008 11:59

“…an energetic, absorbing film…”

Trainspotting director Danny Boyle's crowd-pleasing Slumdog Millionaire picked up The People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival and has also notched up a number of US Critics' Awards and Golden Globes nominations. Always an interesting director, Boyle's skill with child actors is the backbone on which this unusual story stands. For as gripping as the narrative is, it is two young boys that command the camera.

 

Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty) adapts Vikas Swarup's novel about Jamal (Skins' Dev Patel), a call-centre worker who beats the bank on India's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Naturally, he's arrested for fraud, and while locked in detention reveals his whole sorry story: growing up in Bombay's slums, his coercion into a gang of beggars, his brother's elevation by Mumbai's mobsters and, somewhat inevitably, star-crossed love. Yet the question remains - did Jamal cheat?

 

Slumdog Millionaire is mostly a single idea, albeit a nifty one: exploit Millionaire's natural tension to boost the story of a young man's aching heart. Boyle's production is as eye-catching as ever - it's all quick cuts and textured shots immersed in the compressed, radiant streets of India. Flashbacks let him explore different tones: comedy, tragedy, gangster violence, and even corporate drama. It's like Shekhar Kapur directing Monsoon Wedding on a Bollywood set, without the songs.

 

Brutality is a defining theme (ironic since the film was made prior to the devastating recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai), yet Boyle doesn't stop long enough to take advantage of the questions that the film almost raises - loss, fate or the Dickensian reality of modern India, for instance. He's too busy with tricky camera angles, and doesn't give himself quite enough time to get the story across the finishing line without looping. Rather like Millionaire itself, Boyle starts trying to create tension where it doesn't actually exist. None the less, for most of its running time, Slumdog Millionaire is an energetic, absorbing film that rises well above the pack.