Review of Slumdog Millionaire (2008) by Nolan S — 06 Nov 2013

"Slumdog Millionaire is an incredible film which tugs at the heart strings and leaves the viewers amazed" is a line you will most likely hear from 94% of worldwide critics, but it sure is hell isn't one you'll hear from me.

Slumdog Millionaire had a decent premise, but Danny Boyle turns it into a story that's cluttered and packed with too many themes for it's own good.

For some reason, the two worst aspects of the film were the two aspects that tend to ruin an action film: poor cinematography and terrible choppy editing. Yet for a drama film which features some of each that I would define as appalling, it won Academy Awards which merely lower the credibility of the Academy in my opinion. It was horrible, yet it won Oscars. By that logic, Pearl Harbour should have won Best Screenplay and Ben Affleck should have won Best Actor for the same film. There's your logic, Academy.

Also, I found that the moments that featured the strange repetitive camera shots in lieu of film which intensified the atmosphere but damaged the viewing experience, as did the editing and cinematography.

And the story structure is too complicated for its own good and clutters things way too difficultly for me to keep up with and therefore even care about.

Plus, the pacing in Slumdog Millionaire is constantly inconsistent and the point of each narrative flashback more or less gets lost beneath the rest of the complicated plot dynamics until it pulls back to the fact that the story is about a kid on Millionaire.

While along the way it does raise valid points about gameshow unfairness and issues in India, the story never rises above excessive melodrama, even when it attempts to lighten the mood with unfunny and charmless comedy.

One last issue I had with Slumdog Millionaire was the one much of India had: in an attempt to hit drama hard and tug at the heart strings, the story becomes too primarily focused on being a negative film by showing too much of the downside of India in an attempt to appeal to audiences and really overdoes the plot dynamics to an extreme extent. I was less in emotional turmoil over the events than I was bored by them. I mean, people criticised the 2004 best picture-winning movie Crash for having too many cliche's and trying to hit hard with the events, but Crash did it just right. Slumdog Millionaire did the same thing with a single focused character and a lack of sufficient structure. Crash was given too much negativity for winning best picture when it was an excellently crafted drama, but only 6% of worldwide critics recognise issues with Slumgdog Millionaire, and now I feel like part of the minority. So Slumdog Millionaire even unintentionally succeeded at making me feel like part of the minority, so now on feel like I can't appreciate a good film. But dammit, I could appreciate Crash so don't anyone judge me.

On the positive side which is bigger for most people, I loved the soundtrack which featured some excellent songs along the way which I would remember more than Slumdog Millionaire itself.

Also, the entire cast was very good and the people portraying Jamal Malik stuck out as very talented, and they made dynamics work best they could.

But all in all, you're likely to enjoy Slumdog Millionaire but I won't understand why because I wouldn't call this a film that comes close to being nominated for an Academy Award, and if anything it was just a tug at the heartstrings of Academy members and it worked. But it didn't work on me, and all it did was resurrect my passionate belief that Crash was an overly criticised drama that received more crap when it won the Oscar for Best Picture than Slumdog Millionaire.