Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is essentially the new Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It will be just as influential. It is a love story from an exotic corner of the world, which the ordinary viewer would otherwise never see, told in a universal language. And the Indians will try to convince you (as the Chinese tried to do at the time) that they have been making such films for decades. No, they haven’t. Someone had to come from abroad and take out their Western European lens. Slumdog Millionaire is not a Bollywood film, but a firework-like celebration of Bollywood as a film culture with all its romanticism. In its beautiful love story, Slumdog Millionaire fully utilizes the splendors and miseries of the Indian microcosm, thus making it attractive for the audience in an imaginative and fresh way. It is a small and unobtrusive film gem that shines more than any Los Angeles jewelry store where Benjamin Button goes shopping. Slumdog Millionaire is a movie celebrating life, faith and positive thinking; a movie that wasn’t made to become the award-winning film of the year... and that is why it deserves it. Nowadays this film is a small miracle. And Danny Boyle is a god. P.S: Jen Lopez and Rosario Dawson might have Freida Pinto’s features but not her eyes. No Hollywood actress has Freida Pinto’s eyes... (02/20/2009)

A Brit-Bollywood remake of the Czech fairytale movie O chytrém Honzovi (= Clever Jack). This could be called Clever Jamal or How a Poor Guy with Common Sense Found Happiness and it is extremely good and enlightening. But didn’t it bend the truth whenever it could (mainly in the live transmissions) for the crude purpose of wringing your heart strings? Yes, but who cares in a fairytale, huh kids? P.S.: And isn’t the book better than the movie? No, it’s not. Because Swarup’s work is something completely different. Some black humor, cynicism and a message that is the exact opposite of Boyle’s ever so sweet, naive candy cane. And I like that kind of thing more than fairytales... (01/05/2009)

A naive, clichéd and predictable fairy tale about how a poor boy came to happiness. Boyle's film captivates with the sweeping realities of contemporary, overpopulated India, but otherwise has little else to offer. The childhood scenes are excellent, full of life and filmmaking passion, but the rest follows the same routine as many other films, without a hint of surprise, suspense or believable emotions. Bollywood came to Hollywood with a bang and everyone sat on their asses. Not me, though, sorry. (02/03/2009)

Danny Boyle got rid of Alex Garland and brought a cheap fairy tale to the West, exactly according to the Bollywood model. Its aesthetics of dirty slums and the search for happiness in it obviously earn touching moments with the audience, standing applause, and gilded statuettes. Unfortunately, to me, it smells of cheap calculation, which is only kept afloat by the fantastic passage with the little kids, which is funny and sad, and above all real, which cannot be said about the rest. It’s not that I don't appreciate the effort, but I yawned through the efforts of this hypocritical world - the visuals are like one of Tony Scott's Mexican trips and the good music (Boyle’s trademark) is nowhere to be found. I understand the general enthusiasm, I just don't share it. (02/13/2009)

An exploitative film... a selectively filmed and sounded demonstration of colonial fantasy with added value in the form of purifying catharsis. Slumdog Millionaire doesn't say anything about India, it's just borrowing it as padding in sympathetic shrapnel aimed at Western audiences. The essence of contemporary ideological escapism, however riveting technically. I don't believe anything about that movie. Boyle's obsession with the invisible hand of fate is typical from this point of view - just garish colors on an empty concrete block of a "guaranteed hit". (02/20/2011)