[Movie Monday] Slumdog Millionaire

I saw Danny Boyle's latest yesterday, in the midst of all the post-Oscar hype, and as a fan of his previous work, I was prepared to like it a whole lot. Little did I know.

Holy crap, how overrated is this film? I don't mean to sound like the typical Internet critic douche, but come ON. Far from Boyle's finest, let alone the best film of 2008. Sure, it's better than the Beach, but what the Hell people.

My main gripe is the fact that it feels like there's a huge disconnect between the two parts of the movie, kind of a reverse La Vitta é Bella, in a sense. In this case, the first part is a gritty, dark and realistic drama, while the second part is something of a Bollywood farce with an old-Hollywood forced happy ending. But between the two, there's no real link, nothing that glues them together. Even the characters feel like completely different people.

I feel the need to emphasise just how forced the happy ending is. Of all the horrible clichés storytellers can use to pull their characters out of the shitholes they've dug for them, fate and predetermination are amongst the very worst. I don't mean to get all philosophical about the nature of choice and whether we are in control of our destinies, but as a storytelling technique alone, it's just lazy. It sends out the message that if you're meant to be awesome, you barely have to try. The right answer will come to you anyway. Of course, if it wasn't written that you'd be awesome, you're royally butt-fucked. Hooray!

Now, I don't mean to sound grumpy and imply that happy endings, especially forced ones, are necessarily bad. They work just fine in goofy movies such as A Life Less Ordinary (incidentally, another Boyle film) but in a gritty, realistic drama, ehhhh... that's asking too much from poor ol' Ms. Suspension of Disbelief.

Don't even get me started at the dancing scene at the end.

The Final Verdict:

2 out of 5 (Zelda) rupees.

TL;DR Version

Academy awards are becoming more and more like mercy fucks lately.