Danny Boyle's latest centres on a plucky street kid who somehow finds himself one question from winning the top prize on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Even before it carried all before it at the Golden Globes this weekend, Slumdog Millionaire looked a fair bet to defy similar odds at next month's Oscars: the critics have been bowled over by this adrenaline shot of life and love in the ghettos of Mumbai.
One senses a fair number of reviewers thought long and hard about flagging up the cornier aspects of this rags to riches tale: its unlikely romance, the jump between Hindi and English; even the depiction of the poorest parts of India's largest city in dazzling, colourful, turn-up-the-brightness-dial resplendence, before succumbing to the unfettered, joyous optimism brewed up by Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty).
"Together, they have managed the difficult task of creating a film that leaves you with a big smile on your face - without insulting your brain," writes The Sunday Times's Cosmo Landesman. "It's great to see Boyle, after a series of rather undistinguished films, back on great form. He's the prince of zip, zap, wham, bam, boom film-making, who shoots from every angle but the obvious. The action moves from hallucination to dream to nightmare, with quick forays into fantasy. It's a glorious and great work."
"The film uses dazzling cinematography, breathless editing, driving music and headlong momentum to explode with narrative force, stirring in a romance at the same time," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "For Danny Boyle, it is a personal triumph. He combines the suspense of a game show with the vision and energy of City of God and never stops sprinting."
"This is a film so upbeat and colourful that, by the time you're relaying its infectious air of optimism to friends, you could forget that it features orphans, slaughter, organised crime, poverty, enslavement and police brutality in its crowd-pleasing repertoire of suffering and renewal," writes Time Out's Dave Calhoun. "Hell, it even ends with a get-up-and-dance Bollywood number on the platform of Mumbai's Victoria Terminus."
"Despite being overpraised - it arrives garlanded with the kind of reviews that must have come out after the opening night of King Lear - this is still very effective entertainment," writes our own Peter Bradshaw. "Despite the extravagant drama and some demonstrations of the savagery meted out to India's street children, this is a cheerfully undemanding and unreflective film with a vision of India that, if not touristy exactly, is certainly an outsider's view; it depends for its full enjoyment on not being taken too seriously."
For me, Slumdog Millionaire is a down and dirty glimpse of third world life through a wonderfully populist, feelgood filter. We may see the worst of Mumbai life - the street child kidnapped by a Fagin-like begging gang and blinded to increase his earning potential; the toilet which is little more than a hole in the ground, beneath which gallons of festering excrement menacingly await - but this is ultimately a comfortingly generic storyline reminiscent of a hundred million rags to riches tales.
Best are the flashback sequences of protagonist Jamal Malik as a mischievous scamp desperately battling to stay one step ahead in a city so fast that even Boyle's quickfire cutting cannot keep up with it. I'm a little surprised that Brit Dev Patel, who plays Malik aged 20, has received so much praise, rather than the Indian actors who played the younger versions of the character. Patel seems somewhat detached in his scenes on the game show itself, but by that point the film has already embedded you firmly in its wildly exuberant dynamic.
But perhaps you see things differently? Slumdog Millionaire strikes me as a film that could suffer an epic backlash if it triumphs on Oscar night. Right now it's revelling in its underdog status, but there's plenty of ammunition available to those who want to see it pulled down from its pedestal. What did you think?
