Slumdog Millionaire has undeniable appeal. It's engaging, bursting with life and energy, and isn't boring for a moment. A sizable audience will thrill to the rags-to-riches romance of the story, without ever upsetting themselves by dwelling on the more unsettling elements, which the film seems determined to gloss over.
Jamal (Dev Patel), an uneducated young tea vendor from Mumbai (formerly Bombay) has won an unprecedented 10 million rupees on the Hindi version of the popular game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” though the program ends before he gets to the final question and his shot at winning the entire 20-million-rupee jackpot. Upon leaving the studio for the day, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. Nobody believes that this humble “slumdog” could answer questions that have defeated more educated contestants. Jamal insists on his innocence, and relates a traumatic story from his childhood that explains how he knew the answer to the first question. He has another trauma that relates to the second question, and so on, giving us multiple flashbacks to Jamal's impoverished and hair-raising life. His stories also tell of his treacherous brother Salim (now a thuggish gangster) and his lost love Latika, who he hopes to reunite with.
Slumdog Millionaire isn't as complex as it would like to think it is. Jamal is a fresh-faced, innocent protagonist, in love with a beautiful woman about whom we know very little. He is a playing piece on a board game, with a giant “Wealth and True Love!” square at the end and several arbitrary obstacles along the way. The squares on the game board are inscribed with things like “Find a gullible American tourist: collect $100,” “Your brother betrays you: lose a turn,” “Your brother saves you: roll again” and “You get arrested and tortured by the police: return to start.” At least the performances are strong, with talented actors portraying each of the three main characters in various stages of their lives, but the fact that they are immediately recognizable to us at each age speaks less about the performer's talent than to the fact that these characters never change.
The slums of Mumbai are depicted as full of horrors. One monstrous character actually blinds children in order to make them more effective beggars. This film offers only three ways for young orphans to escape from this hellish lifestyle: become a violent criminal (Salim); become the property of a violent criminal (Latika) or luck into the biggest cash prize in history on a popular game show. That's an unsavoury message for a film that's trying so hard to be joyous and life-affirming.
It’s hard to focus on Jamal's pursuit of his barely-defined love interest when, just a few scenes prior, he was being tortured by the police for knowing the answers on a quiz show. Forgive me for dwelling on this, but isn't getting tortured by the police for knowing the answers on a quiz show kind of a big deal? Why, then, are we back on the set of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” moments later, acting like it never happened?
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