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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