Seriously.
It is alternately funny and moving. At times, too moving; it's definitely a Danny Boyle flick because there's more running in this movie than there was in "Jurassic Park." When all of that running is filmed at a 60-degree angle, it can make you a little motion-sick. Thank heavens there weren't any zombies.
I'm not saying it isn't a good movie. It's effective in plucking the heart-strings and provides a couple of nail-chewingly suspenseful moments, particularly one involving a cell-phone and a 20-million-rupee question. (Although if you don't want to realize just how poor a great deal of India is, don't watch this movie, and don't check the exchange rate of rupees to dollars.) Dev Patel as Jamal is very good at being honest, earnest, and generally likable, and Freida Pinto is appropriately sigh-inducingly beautiful as Latika. The way that the answers to the game-show questions intertwine with Jamal's real-life experiences is wonderful.
But what I didn't like about this movie, and I guess it shows me up for the old cynic that I am, is its insistence that "True Wuv" will conquer all. Particularly that two people who don't really know much of anything about each other, and who haven't had time to develop much of a relationship over the years, can run away together and live happily ever after, and especially when Latika is given next to no character development. Yeah, I know Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and all those other tales have the same concept; I don't like them either. It makes me wonder, like "Titanic" did, how these two people would look one or five or ten years from the ending, when they've realized that they don't have much of anything in common other than a shared history of trouble, and that that isn't really enough. No amount of brightly-colored dancing is going to fix that. Although in a capitalist economy, maybe 20 million rupees will.
That being said, the storyline between the brothers, Jamal and Salim, is heartfelt and well-developed. Unlike the romance, I felt that their story ended the right way, even if it wasn't a tidy Happy Ending. The performances are generally good and the game show works as a non-gimmicky way to tell Jamal's life story. I'd recommend it, but it's not entirely grown-up yet. For an adult Best Picture nod, my money's still on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
HHH of HHHH
