Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
No use beating around the bush. I LOVE THIS MOVIE! Yes, it warrants my use of capital letters. It is that good, in my opinion.
Slumdog Millionaire has everything that I like in movies I prefer to watch. It’s got a rags to riches story, a romantic couple and their journey, a great use of the locations, characters that tug at your heart, and a fabulous soundtrack! With a fitting Bollywood-like number to boot 
The movie is about Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an orphan from the Mumbai slums who lands himself in the Indian version of the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? He is one question away from being the first to win 20 million rupees when the show runs out of time for the night and breaks until the next day. At this time, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating because how can a slumdog kid possibly know the answers when professors, lawyers, etc. haven’t even made it as far in the show as Jamal?
As he is tortured and questioned in the police station, he shares his life story and tells us how chapters in his life gave him the answers to the questions given to him on the show. The chapters in his life include his life in the slums with his older brother Salim, how they come to be orphans, their experiences with gangs and how they struggled to survive, and Latika (Freida Pinto), an orphaned girl from his childhood that he’s never forgotten.
Dev Patel and Freida Pinto
Jamal didn’t go on the show though to win millions of rupees, but rather in the hope that Latika would be watching him. Not for money but for love. Even with his orphan background, having lived in poverty and in danger, his main impetus is his love for a girl. Latika has always been his driving force to not go down the same road as his brother, though the latter does redeem himself in the end.
I’ve been hearing great reviews of this movie for a couple of months now and I can see why. As I watched the movie, I felt like I was in the show audience and a citizen of India, falling in love and rooting for Jamal, not just to win the 20 million rupees but to be with Latika as well. I guess you can say that for this temporary moment in time, he becomes like his adored actor Amitabh Bachchan, who he says is “the most famous man in India.”
I thought Dev Patel did pretty well for his first time out in a movie. I’ve only seen him once or twice in a few episodes of Skins but seeing the movie gives me another reason to watch Skins now. He’s getting quite a lot of awards lately and though a bit pathetic of me, I’m really rooting for him to do well, just like I rooted for Jamal in the movie.
I absolutely loved the music in the movie as well. Glad to hear M.I.A all over the place lately (about damn time if you ask me); I quite liked the version of “Paper Planes” in the movie. I thought I’d be tired of this song already after it was constantly aired on the radio due to Pineapple Express, but nope! A.R. Rahman, awesome job!
At the end of it all, I guess the message is that love is better than money. Money is not worth having if you don’t have love. Money is temporary but your love for someone always stays with you. Even if that love, in the long run, doesn’t work out, you’ll always have the memory of its existence. Things are going to happen the way they’re supposed to happen. It is already written. That’s my final answer.
Rating: 
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 1:50 am and is filed under Golden Globe Awards, Movie Reviews, Movies & Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Kris Reply:
January 11th, 2009 at 2:14 am
I loved that scene. It’s one of those scenes that you’ll put into your memory files. AMITABH BACHCHAN!!!!!!!!
Definitely one of my favorite movies ever
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