Mahal's Navy

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Rating ... F (9)

Slumdog Millionaire is a return to form for the Academy. After two consecutive years where voters curiously bestowed top prize on halfway decent movies (The Departed and No Country for Old Men) it seems the Crash crowd has regained control. Slumdog Millionaire flawlessly satisfies the award's ostensible quota of tenuous connections, rampant bombast, and overblown conflagrations while simultaneously stooping to soft-peddle social issues and provide easy uplift to the cheap seats. "You don't have to be a genius! [to win at Millionaire]" exclaims protag Jamal while he's being questioned by Indian police (his later responses to his torturers are that of insufferable righteous indignation) in one of many instances where the film brazenly extols mediocrity. So in the spirit of Jamal, you don't have to be a complete prole to enjoy Slumdog Millionaire ... but it sure helps.

Jamal is a typical Indian boy. He is also a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which he will most certainly win, if that wasn't already obvious given the title. The two coincide to form the film's principal gimmick - that Jamal wins at the show not because he's intelligent or well-learned but because the questions are all magically form-fit to the events of his past, the details of which are interspersed between him being asked the question and his response. These interludes actually comprise the bulk of the film and become tiring rather quickly considering director Danny Boyle's limited stylistic repetoire of garish yellow filter and canted frame. To make matters worse each flashback is edited and shot as though it were a music video, which is not simply annoying but blatant hypocrisy when you consider how it clashes with the segments' overall tone of third world guilt - which just so happens to be an irritating mantra in its own right. (The film's sightseeing cinematography confirms its cursory attitude and arrant refinement for western audiences - if you believe what you see here, the landscape of India consists entirely of slums and call centers ... and the Taj Mahal, of course.)

Slumdog Millionaire is so infatuated with its own awardsy appeal that it can scarcely be bothered to create any sort of foundation for all its hysteria. (No surprise nearly every place Jamal frequents is a seedy joint or den of thieves, but even benign encounters like his brief stint as a cook are rife with anti-aristocratic histrionics. Why expect a successful figure of wealth and stature to act anything but conceited?) Jamal austerely sulks and glares through his every scene - because as we all know being more serious is directly related to how effectively the film communicates something of meaning! - not because the situation calls for it but because he's conveniently entitled to this pious disposition on account of his Traumatic Past. Jamal barrels through events and scenarios of varying brutality but their function is merely to act as illusory roadblocks to his inevitable success on the show, and accordingly Slumdog Millionaire never sees fit to provide any actual examination of the social grievances it presents. The questions on Millionaire conveniently mesh with Jamal's backstory and allow him to broadcast his image nationwide to reunite with his childhood sweetheart but the film's love story is wafer-thin - replete with eye-rollingly ponderous statements on how the two are fated to be together yet devoid of dramatic conflict or opposing viewpoints. Slumdog's climax is shamelessly manufactured for maximum heartstring tugging in addition to being utterly artless in its construction; the nature of the final question is bluntly forecasted when Jamal continues to namedrop the same literary reference for no specific reason during the film's first half, and on top of that the question is disconcertingly easy (even though it's the last question) in order to reinforce the film's praise of idiocy and accompanying implication that destiny will safeguard an individual despite his or her cluelessness. Hell, Slumdog can't even be bothered to ascertain the particulars of Millionaire with any reasonable accuracy. "Miss this question and you'll lose everything!" the host cautions; except, an incorrect response in Millionaire drops a player back to a predefined benchmark, not zero, meaning the omission was likely intentional in service of cheesy tension ratcheting for an endeavor Jamal can't lose. It's a trifling complaint, to be sure, but unfortunately it's also entirely emblematic of Slumdog Millionaire at its worst - affectation at the expense of actuality.