REACTION: Jim Halpert, Dwight Schrute at the front of the line to resign from Dunder Mifflin with Michael Scott

L.A. Times writer Jon Caramanica sort of got what he wanted last night during the 18th, season five episode of "The Office."

NBC did not fire Steve Carell or dump his character Michael Scott from the sitcom, but the regional manager of the Scranton, Pa. branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper company quit his job in "New Boss," and online buzz indicates that someone "major" from the office might be coming with him "Jerry Maguire" style.

Anyone caught up with more recent episodes would bet their money on Jim Halpert (John Krasinki), whose teasing of Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) landed him in trouble with the company's new vice president, Charles Miner (Idris Elba). He might just preempt his possible termination by quitting as well.

If someone is going to leave with Michael Scott, investing time in setting up Jim Halpert's demise might just be a clever way to deviate attention from the more obvious suspect, the primarily loyal Dwight Schrute. It was only one episode prior that Michael Scott's No. 3 was willing to be terminated to cover up his boss' golden ticket idea that could have lost Dunder Mifflin a lot of money.

Someone else "major' on the Scranton office's payroll that might leave with Michael Scott is Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) because she has developed a painstakingly sympathetic brother-sister dynamic with her boss, not to mention that Jerry Maguire was joined in his own professional meltdown by a similar low-level office employee.

A fair assumption to make is that Michael Scott has seen the 1996 film and might very well try to act out the famous "Who's coming with me?" scene before saying goodbye.

No one else from the usual cast of characters has developed as close of a relationship with Michael Scott to risk losing a steady job during a shaky economic time that has been acknowledged as also occurring in this fictional world.

Something else to consider other than who might join the ranks of the unemployed with Michael Scott, if this comes to pass, is why the TV sitcom would bother to have him walk away from coworkers he values as a surrogate family. It might not simply be to spice things up during what might very well be the midpoint of the run of "The Office."

An important point to remember is that Charles Miner was initially set up as liking Michael Scott. Dunder Mifflin's new vice president genuinely seems to want to maintain a level of professionalism commensurate with performing the duties required of his job.

Easily forgotten is that David Wallace (Andy Buckley) is the bad guy in this situation because now that he no longer undervalues Michael Scott as a manager, he is trying to control someone whose effective leadership he cannot understand. Having Michael Scott gather information about the Prince Family Paper company alone speaks volumes about the chief financial officer's priorities.

Maybe Michael Scott quits until Elba's Charles Miner, who is set to appear in only six episodes, exposes the skeletons in David Wallace's corporate closet.

Whatever happens next week, "Two Weeks" is sure to make for entertainment riveting enough to include in the lineup for "Movie Mondays" in the Scranton, Pa. branch's conference room.

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REACTION: L.A. Times writer nitpicks the comedic existence of Steve Carell's Michael Scott on NBC's 'The Office'

Imagine trying to enjoy "Seinfeld" without Jerry Seinfeld, "Frasier" without Kelsey Grammer's Frasier Krane, or even "I Love Lucy" without Lucille Ball.

This is what Los Angeles Times writer Jon Caramanica argues would breathe life into NBC's "The Office."

Caramanica not only suggests that Michael Scott should be fired from the sitcom, but that NBC should also hand Steve Carell, the actor who portrays the character, his walking papers maybe because it was a slow day in entertainment news.

One can only remember how such a creative shift worked wonders for "Spin City," "Stargate SG-1" and "Sliders" when these series' title characters were recast or replaced.

Driving this argument is the assertion that Michael Scott has become boring just because the sitcom's writers did something that increasingly fewer TV writers do nowadays, that is, they provided their tweaked creation with a sense of character development.

Maybe Caramanica is one of the fans of the British version of "The Office," which was unable to have its viewers love David Brent (Ricky Gervais), the character that inspired Michael Scott, because of its limited 14-episode run.

Carell's take on the character has evolved beyond the inappropriate managerial actions of his predecessor, and it only stands to reason that British viewers would have tired of David Brent if he somehow was able to appear on the BBC for 76 more episodes without learning that there is rhyme to his seemingly absurd reason.

Though it could be argued that some comedy depends on offending social norms, Michael Scott is not exactly the one-dimensional title character of "When The Whistle Blows." Naive arrogance demonstrated by Michael Scott and David Brent comes from some place deeper than a need to get TV viewers to have a laugh, after all.

Just because Michael Scott no longer overtly subverts his own bad behavior does not necessarily mean that he can no longer be wacky. It simply means that the manager of the Scranton, Pa. branch of Dunder Mifflin has cemented his role as the sitcom's protagonist, not its villain.

Do not forget that a lot of offensive things still come out of Michael Scott's mouth that serve to offset how sad the character can be at times. Not to mention his inability to accept the oftentimes loyal Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) as anything more than sycophantic coworker, that racism still exists, that fat people are not gross, or keep a girlfriend.

Remember that Michael Scott has a penchant for inappropriateness when it comes to dating. He used to pine for his then boss Jan Levinson-Gould (Melora Hardin) the same way he now pines for Holly Flax (Amy Ryan), who was the human resources representative for the Scranton office when they dated.

Yes, Michael Scott's shoulder's are more squared and his hair is fuller, but Steve Carell should not be fired because he now has more of an income with which to take better care of himself.

Less questionable about what Caramanica suggested is that Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight be fired from their jobs for a few episodes because it would allow viewers to miss them and other supporting characters such as Andy Bernard (Ed Helms), Creed Bratton, or Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker) to evolve.

But at the same time Jim Halpert is no longer simply a hapless bystander because he has necessarily become more integrated into the office's unprofessional dynamic. He and his coworkers have all naturally become more of a family after what will soon be five complete seasons.

Because without Jim Halpert's involvement in what are primarily Michael Scott's exploits, he would come off as someone who enjoys seeing or helping his sympathetic boss get what he deserves. That would not be the quintessential Jim Halpert, who more than makes up for his collusion with his boss by teasing Dwight Schrute as an older brother would do.

And Dwight Schrute is simply Dwight Schrute, a character whose strange sense of reality is only strengthened by confidently believing such things as the possibility of bear attacks in Pennsylvania or that superheroes walk the Earth.

What seems off is how "The Office" no longer utilizes the proven TV dynamic of following an on-again, off-again relationship between Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) the way "Cheers" did with Sam and Diane. Still, one cannot fault writers for trying something new. 

Perhaps it is too early to judge the creative direction of a TV sitcom that might simply be suffering from being at a traditionally lackluster midpoint, especially if this is done just to have something about which to write. That is just unprofessional.

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REVIEW: Jimmy Fallon's misfired 'Late Night' antics during his first week might yet get progressively better

Seven was the charm for Jimmy Fallon to find his "Late Night" hosting groove by making Emily Blunt comfortable enough to enjoy a pretzel and orienting formerly hard news monologue jokes toward booze and monkeys.

Maybe there really is Vodka in his mug? One can only hope that the young host can keep up this momentum by telling more bawdy jokes, desisting from interrupting his guests and breaking free from catering to the network's need to sell commerical products the way he did during the first six shows.

Fallon's first few monologues were rushed as he was clearly trying very hard to read the cue cards without messing up. His lackluster jokes came with obvious punch lines about the news of the day that were not in accordance with comedy's offensively risky function of chipping away at societal norms.

Airing beyond prime time is an opportunity for Fallon to really let loose a few jokes that would have a few objectionably uptight viewers writing letters to NBC's censors now that he is more comfortable in front of a studio audience and TV cameras.

A promising part of Fallon's first monologue was the sexually suggestive slow jam about the U.S. stimulus package that was hip and novel enough to make a news joke funny.

More often than not, late night talk show hosts become stuttering fools who try to comically digest news stories, the details of which they know very little, instead of just goofing on them the way Jon Stewart does in a humorously collegial manner. Just listen to Fallon mention anything about the U.S. troops in Iraq to see how these news items are too sensitive and intricate for comedians to exploit in order to get a rise out of an audience.

The new host of "Late Night" would do well to adopt something similar to Stewart's comedic formula, poke fun at more mainstream news items too absurd not to be funny such as The Octomom, or talk about tech and TV shows that his 20-something-year-old interns probably love.

Facebook's status function, "Internet Video of the Day" and allowing an audience member to sing one of Jon Bon Jovi's own songs in front of the musician made for fun segments simply because a lot of people are into social networking, surfing for random video-inspired laughs on the Web and rock music.

But why does Fallon have a laptop on his desk? It seems a bit overkill.

If anything, Fallon shines when he appropriately directs his energy toward pleasing the youth demographic by singing with Justin Timberlake and dancing with Cameron Diaz, or he does just as well making light of such pop culture phenomenon such as "Gossip Girl" and Steve Wozniak's dance moves on "Dancing with The Stars."

Pandering to or knocking pop culture should help carry the show at least until Fallon grows into his late night groove and before he and his mid-30-something-year-old celebrity friends come off as sad old people trying to be cool.

Though, having audience members lick consumer products, settle the feud between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston by pretending to be them and a disruptive history buff in the audience geeking out about The Gadsen Purchase is too sophomoric or pointless to even inspire sympathy chuckles.

What Fallon should take more seriously than anything else is his too casual interviewing style that noticeably causes guests to wonder what to say after he spouts out continuous sentence fragments, struggling to sound somewhat coherently folksy. It is as though Fallon is hanging out with friends, but suddenly remembers he is on TV and freaks out. This is probably why he completely blew any chance of having a stimulating conversation with Robert DeNiro.

Only when Fallon is already well-acquainted with someone such as Tina Fey, Drew Barrymore and Timberlake do the interviews flow well, calling into question whether his staff even bothers conducting pre-interviews with guests with whom he has not already established a rapport.

Further detracting from the show are droll video segments involving blonde suburban moms, an outreach program for struggling corporate CEOs and a flashback competition that are only good for a few, if any, chuckles.

Any momentum Fallon does establishes is quickly diminished when he gets off on a tangent about anything mildly funny that gets a pop out of the audience, sizing up the quality of his own jokes with air bowling, or dwelling on some minor detail just to remind everyone that he is still there.

A possibly catastrophic consequence of Fallon's insistence on being a part of every laugh occurred when he debated a noticeably perturbed Amanda Peet about the proper pronunciation of her film "2010" and then did not seem to know anything about her past cinematic work.

Trivial, but sure to hurt Fallon in the long run is how closely he appears to suck on the network's metaphoric tit by orienting segments around marketing an 108-inch Sharp flat screen and carpet samples, not to mention making sure not to sing verbatim the copyrighted "Happy Birthday" song.

He should just run with whatever is hilarious and apologize thereafter for hurting anyone's feelings, obligating the network to create fake Web sites used in gags, or angering censors the way Conan O'Brien did.

It is not as though Fallon has not already used the self-deprecating humor the former host of "Late Night" often adopted to downplay bad monologue jokes.

If Fallon learns from his first-week blunders, still unconvinced critics might yet sing his praises seven more shows from now when he possibly becomes a Conan epigone, bearable enough for which to stay up late, or becomes his own man.

God speed Jimmy Fallon!

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REVIEW: 'Watchmen' fails to justify why anyone should care enough to swoon over its amazing visual style

The following is a review of "Watchmen" the film, not an examination of the plot's congruity with its graphic novel source material by writer Alan Moore.

"Watchmen" is a visually stunning film that might easily leave fanboys drooling about the attractiveness of the needless violence and sex it features.

But they might not notice that these Watchmen are nothing more than flamboyantly dressed action stars who fail to justify why they should be riveting enough to watch.

"Watchmen" explores the promising premise of what would happen if superheroes not only lived among humans, but used their extraordinary abilities to win U.S.-waged foreign conflicts such as The Vietnam War and maintain civil order at home caused by people who protest against their interference. A team of retired costumed heroes known as The Watchmen deal with the consequences of such actions in this film.

When a former colleague known as The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is assassinated in 1985, a very paranoid inkblot-masked man named Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) informs fellow Watchmen that the perpetrator might very well do the same to all of the team. As Rorschach investigates, he and three other Watchmen caught in a love triangle continuously recall their past actions that have brought the world close to the brink of a nuclear exchange between The U.S. and The Soviet Union.

Anyone unfamiliar with "Watchmen" will as a result quickly catch on to what is going on in this visual treat that allows its super main characters little time in which to demonstrate the tragedy of how they allowed the opportunity to make the world safer overshadow ethical values that are alluded to, but never throughly explored. 

To be fair, The Watchmen spend a lot of time belaboring, but failing to illustrate that they are characters morally ambiguous enough to care about.

Meaningful character exploration is replaced by needless dry exposition that revels in Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) showing off his blue penis and causing people to implode, The Comedian amassing a large body count that includes a pregnant Vietnamese woman and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) engaging in soft core sex with Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson).

Instead of focusing on scenes that feature attractive exposition, gratuitous violence and sex for two hours and 42 minutes, "Watchmen" would have benefitted substantially if more time were devoted to explaining who The Comedian was before no one cares that he eventually tears up about his past sadistic actions, showing Dr. Manhattan as someone more than just a guy who throws a fit when his girlfriend ends their relationship, Silk Spectre as a character that does not only need to shack up with anyone who will take her in and at least somewhat explored Ozymandias in order for his one-dimensionally ridiculous plan to be of any interest.

Perhaps this would have helped to make Dr. Manhattan as a metaphor for God's harmful effect on mankind not seem so unexpected and hackneyed.

Most of the acting cast as a consequence does not have much to do other than look menacing or fashionable in their superhero attire. Haley is the only actor whose character Rorschach is allowed an opportunity to show how he became such a grumpily violent stalwart for justice, but this as well is reduced to one short, bloody flashback about his run-in with two bullies as a child.

The Comedian's assertion that "Life is a joke" is proven true in "Watchmen" because the film is about super powerful beings whose lack of character depth begs the question as to why they exist at all other than to exploit the success of Alan Moore's graphic novel. Fanboys who were too thrilled by Dr. Manhattan leaving blood and guts in his wake and Akerman showing flashes of her character's naked body against a moonlit background might disagree.

Popcorn rating:

(3 1/2 out of 5 pieces)

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REACTION: New 'Terminator Salvation' trailer exhilaratingly rallies interest in the fight for humanity's survival

Although not entirely new, the latest "Terminator Salvation" trailer has plenty of fresh footage, riveting action sequences, cool tag lines and appropriate background rock music to make anyone excited about its May 21 release.

Most revealing about the trailer is footage that shows that Sam Worthington's Marcus Wright's body is not only made up of replicated human tissue over metal endoskeleton, but that he - it would be more accurate to say "it" - for some reason believes himself to be human and the only hope for the human resistance. 

Could Marcus Wright be an all-too-human reconnaissance cyborg that the resistance can turn against SkyNet? If the machine proves himself to be as loyal as Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood) believes him to be, perhaps he is the one that provides the know-how of how to reprogram Terminators to serve the human resistance.

New cuts of footage also show John Connor (Christian Bale) attempting to contact via a radio the members of the human resistance presumably from the Crystal Peak military complex moviegoers last saw him in toward the end of 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."

John Connor likely has his own battalion, but is looking for new recruits or to join forces with Michael Ironside's General Ashdown's unit. One has to wonder if John Connor saying "If we stay the course, we are all dead!" refers to a difference in the battle strategies of both leaders. 

  

More of Kate Connor (Bryce Dallas Howard) is shown in her role as a veterinarian-turned-battle-physician, discovering that Marcus Wright is more than just a run-of-the-mill human and something she and John have never before seen.

This indicates that his cyborg physiology is either entirely different from known T-600 and T-800 models or something else entirely. 

A bulk of the trailer's footage reveals nothing new so much as it shows new footage of what has already been seen such as a Moto Terminator motorcycle performing an awesome evasive maneuver, T-600 Terminator models being worked on by someone in some unknown production line and one on the floor with his head having been blown open, a clearer look at The Harvester, more shots of HK-aerial planes and hydrobots, many humans standing around in cattle-like enclosures. 

Not to mention the human resistance combating a combination of SkyNet's metal cronies on a bridge that apparently survived Judgement Day in tact, but might not be left standing by the end of this 130-minute-long film. 

Has humanity begun rebuilding society or does the war take place somewhere outside of the immediate blast radius of the nuclear war?

WATCH THE TRAILER IN HD!

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REVIEW: 'Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li' trains, then knocks out its own potentially viable premise

Many people did not expect anything great to come from "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li," which was seen as another frivolous video game adaptation with no reason to exist other than to appease gamers.

And the film appears to deliberately try to fail to meet even this meager expectation.

"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" would otherwise be a decent action flick if the initially promising story had not eventually become very frivolous, if one of the main supporting actors had taken his character seriously and if references to the video games had been limited to keeping the names of primary characters involved.

Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk), whose wealthy and seemingly altruistic father is kidnapped when she is a child, as an adult comes under the tutelage of a martial arts mystical master named Gen (Robin Shou), who like her father was once an agent of the shadowy Bangkok-based Shadoloo corporation later headed by the evil M. Bison (Neal McDonough). Gen trains his student to look beyond her own pain in order to oppose Bison, who plans to bulldoze the city's slums once he muscles his way toward ownership, and helps its people save their homes. 

A not-too-bad premise drive this story in which Chun-Li voluntarily leaves behind her wealthy estate in Hong Kong to live in Bankok's slums in order to understand the plight of its poor population, who are either hardworking or thieves, much as a young Bruce Wayne does in 2005's "Batman Begins. 

But this attempt to make Chun-Li earn her "street cred" falls short in that there is no real reason why she would do so other than to meet Gen on a whim to find out the origin of a suspicious scroll.

Perhaps Chun Li's commitment to the Bangkok destitute would have been more convincing if she had made a more intimate connection with one of them instead of simply establishing a reputation for wiping the floor with a few criminals who terrorize the area. Instead, moviegoers are expected to accept that some mystical collection binds Chun-Li to her newfound destitute friends.

Another friend who Chun-Li fails to get to know, but somehow is on the same page with is Chris Kline's Charlie Nash, a Bangkok police detective with past experience in dealing with Shadaloo. 

Kline seems to try hard to not sell the frivolous dialogue meant to portray Nash as a slick cop with a penchant for living on the edge and flirting with his new partner for no other reason than to sell himself as a bad boy.  

But the 96-minute-long film does not need to establish a meaningful connection between its title character and the people who populate her surroundings because her mission again eventually becomes a self-interested bid for revenge once Bison, whose portrayal by McDonough is as seductively charming as it could be considering the abstractness of his character, does away with one of her loved ones. 

Kreuk is as a consequence relegated to spouting out lines meant to make her seem cool before or after helicopter-kicking an opponent into submission.

Somewhere in-between her fighting is a mystical subplot explaining why Bison is so heartless that is a strange attempt to tie the villain's relationship with his daughter to that which Chun-Li shares with her own. Conjuring fireballs to enhance already gravity-defying martial arts moves is also something that could have been left out.

"Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li" sets up its own promising premise simply to disappointedly knock it down in a film that is specifically targeted for nostalgic fans of the video game franchise who are sure to dish out $10 to watch it. More disappointing than anything else is that the film could have delivered much more.

Popcorn rating:

(2 out of 5 pieces)

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REVIEW: 'Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep' and miss Sarah Connor uniquely endure what is required of her mission

"Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep" is a cleverly deceptive episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" that forces Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) to tragically face something viewers thought she already did.

Most compelling about the episode are Sarah's nightmares, which feature her talking to the security guard she shot toward the end of "Earthlings Welcome Here." This is because of how its practicality calls into question whether the conversation between Sarah and someone who has since been presumed dead is occurring.

Further adding to this deliberately unclear storytelling formula is the guard's judgmental tone toward Sarah as though her own guilty conscious is manifesting nightmares and a later scene in which fatal gunfire appears to make Judgment Day all but inevitable

Driving home this point for less observant viewers is passing dialogue that suggests nightmares develop when the person having them is avoiding facing something. In other words, do not expect to be able to distinguish reality from nightmarish fantasy from the get-go.

What makes this episode more than just filler is how it forces Sarah to deal with the consequences of her actions even more than she sparingly did in "Desert Cantos." Through the story, viewers learn indirectly that even though Sarah is single-minded in her mission to protect John (Thomas Dekker) and stop Judgement Day, she had not before killed anyone. One would have expected someone so seemingly emotionally absent to have killed many people by now, but this is not the case.

And again, the series exploits Sarah's seeming guilt-ridden conversation with someone she wronged to show how the character looks forward to dying presumably because it is easier than keeping up the fight against SkyNet.

When woven together, the aforementioned story elements serve to reveal in the end that Sarah is forced to live by different ethical standards than most normal people that guide certain actions sure to slowly kill her on the inside over time. Especially hurtful to Sarah is that she inadvertently involves John, the only reason she chooses to keep living, in her misdeeds.

Not working is how Sarah checks herself into a sleep clinic that just happens to be responsible for the red mark she beforehand found on her body. No explanation as to how the clinic's workers managed to sneak into Sarah's house to make the red mark or why it is significant makes this an even more frustrating aspect of the episode that could perhaps be elaborated on later.

A nice, minor touch is how Jesse's previously mentioned mission to keep John away from "her" is complicated when noticeable female tension develops between Sarah, who cannot play overprotective mommy while she is out of commission, and Cameron (Summer Glau), who has seemingly stepped up to be the woman of the house.

Machines apparently have no sense of shame when it comes to how they dress and can cook a decent plate of pancakes.

Though vague and not as exciting as more action-packed episodes, "Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep" is a unique and necessary setup for what is sure to make Sarah an even more interestingly complex character to explore in the future.

WATCH ON HULU!

WATCH "OURSELVES ALONE" PROMO!

Popcorn rating:

(4 out of 5 pieces)

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REMINDER: Sarah Connor's insomnia to bare fruit in a creepy sleep clinic in 'Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep'

Even though she avoids exposing herself to hospitals, Lena Headey's Sarah Connor checks herself into a sleep clinic in the "Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep," tonight's episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

Sarah must really be on the brink of desperation to do something so risky considering that she is a fugitive and generally does not like being kept in clinics as demonstrated in "Terminator 2: Judgement Day."  

Overviews of the episode on the series' official Web site and TV.com indicate that Sarah goes to the sleep clinic after not napping for two weeks and begins to experience nightmares there that the video promo shows involves being abducted and severely choked by the security guard she seemingly kills at the end of "Earthlings Welcome Here."

It is implied in the video that John (Thomas Dekker) suspects that his mother is making up the nightmares given her vision of the three dots, her obsession with which lead to the discovery of a similar-looking aircraft. This should provide Sarah with enough credibility for her son to go along with what she is saying.

While being studied like a lab rat, Sarah thinks about how her nightmares might be tied to whatever SkyNet is cooking up next, but suspect events conveniently start to take place there, the video promo and the overviews show. 

Clips from the video promo and a photo still imply that the attendants at the sleep clinic are up to something tied to a new red scar on Sarah's body. 

A sneak peek of "Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep" shows that the presumed dead security guard is alive and true to the nightmares ends up kidnapping her.

Also included in the episode is John possibly discovering some kind of massive supercomputer, as shown in one photo still, and explaining to Cameron (Summer Glau) how humans perceive dreams, as shown in the sneak peek below. WATCH THE PROMO!

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REVIEW: 'Slumdog Millionaire' nothing more than needlessly violent, riveting fluff in a unique setting

Anyone who did not know halfway through "Slumdog Millionaire" that the third musketeer's name would be the final inquiry posed to the title character on "Who Want's to be Millionaire?" might love the film.

But everyone else who noted how shallowly formulaic it is might know that "Slumdog Millionarie" itself is a third fellow cinematic musketeer right after "Forrest Gump" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" except that it takes place in Indian slums and utilizes a game show as a storytelling vehicle. This is what makes it a novelly entertaining, but not great film that somehow ended up winning The Academy Award for Best Picture during a year of far superior hits.

As in "Forrest Gump" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the title character Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) automatically falls in love with the heroine Latika (Freida Pinto), and moviegoers are expected to want them to be together when adversity, which limits their ability to get to know one another, keeps them apart. Destiny in this instance is meant to serve as an abstract explanation as to why Jamal and Latika are in love.

Perhaps more lines of dialogue would have gone a long way to have given Malik and Pinto something more substantial with which to sell their characters' fated romantic relationship. Not to mention Pinto's Latika being allowed to have the story portray her as shacking up with anyone who has enough money to support her instead of a character with great personal qualities who is worth pursuing.

Another aspect of the story that fails to win over more critical moviegoers is that, as in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Jamal experiences great adversity, but does not exhibit that he learned anything noble enough for him to be worthy of his protagonist status except a few trivia facts that he utilizes to gain the attention of a girl he barely knows on Indian TV. 

Although it is established that Jamal is honest and willing to do anything for love, these are characteristics that he exhibits toward the beginning of the film before fully experiencing the tragic life of a slumdog. This bares the question as to why the presumably heart-of-gold character is worth of exploring at all.

There is nothing wrong with rooting for the underdog, but what is lost in these kind of stories is that moviegoers are expected to become enamored with title characters simply because they suffer a lot, not because they do something honorable. At least "Slum Millionaire" somehow tries to make Jamal seem like a good person when compared to his more licentious brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal), but this pales in comparison to Forrest Gump running back into a bombing zone to save his friend Bubba Gump.

Salim himself is a more developed character in that there is a clear reason why he starts wielding a gun to solve most of his problems, but inexplicably does something that will help his brother achieve happiness in an artistically absurd manner toward the film's end. Further detracting from the character is that he is at one point portrayed as a child wielding a gun in order to commit murder, which was a major nitpick about 1990's "Robocop 2" that Hollywood seems to have allowed to slide with this film.

Violence is also utilized against children for no other end than to have moviegoers access their Mean World Syndrome long enough to care what happens to young Jamal, Salim and Latika.

Most distasteful of all is the perpetuation of the stereotype that Indians work as technicians for customer service phone lines.

Somewhere in all the 120-minute-long fantastical love and unnecessary violence, the film cleverly leads one to suspect that Jamal cheats when Prem Kumar (Anil Kappor) provides him with one answer to a difficult question, but then abruptly has the game show host become a bitter almost mafia-like figure when off camera.

"Slumdog Millionaire," though a uniquely interesting take on the fictional bipoic genre, is one of those meaningless films that people for whatever reason need to love at any given time simply because it serves as a contemporary fairy tale about the downtrodden hero overcoming many obstacles in order to get the girl.

Why the hero loves the heroine and what he learns on the journey to save her is the only thing that apparently is not written.

Popcorn rating:

(31/2 out of 5 pieces)

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REMINDER: Starbuck drinks redrum, Boomer lassos a moon in 'Someone to Watch Over Me'?

Ghostly visions and alternate realities in space appear to be the focus of the 17th, season four "Battlestar Galactica" episode, "Someone to Watch Over Me," promotional multimedia indicates.

No was watching over Captain Samuel Anders (Michael Trucco) when he appears to be waking up from a coma at the end of "Deadlock," and he is not featured in any of the promos for the next episode that airs tonight. But there is enough to explore even if the character is left with no one to attend to his medical care other than Doc Cottle.

Overviews for "Deadlock" from The Sci Fi Channel, TV Guide and TV.com Web sites indicate that Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katie Sackhoff) will see ghostly visions while at the same time talking to a "charismatic" man playing on the new piano she took note of in "Deadlock" in a premise very reminiscent to the famed bar from hell scene from "The Shining." 

By the episode's end, Starbuck "may" come to terms with something "shattering" as to why she found a skull wearing her military tags on the nuked remains of Earth, one of the overviews shows.

Rebel Cylons meanwhile want to get revenge on Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (Grace Park) by charging her with treason even though she established her loyalty by helping to rescue Ellen Tigh (Kate Vernon), who is one of the elder Final Five Cylons, from being dissected by John Cavil (Dean Stockwell), the overviews show. 

Promotional photo stills allude to the possibility that this causes either Boomer or Galen Tyrol (Aaron Douglas), who were once lovers, to experience having lived a domestic life together somewhere that is not space. 

Adding to the drama are Tyrol's efforts to ask for intervention in the matter from President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnel), who might be understandably beholden to The Cylons' desire for vengeance in exchange for their assistance in helping the fleet to move forward to gods know where. Boomer's only saving grace, Ellen, might not be so willing to help The Cylon that helped liberate her from Cavil out of some sense of toaster justice. Both points are established in the sneak peek below or watch the official promo.

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