Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is the feel-good film of late 2008 that is sweeping the awards season. The triumphant story of an uneducated man who manages through luck to win the Indian version of “Who wants to be a millionaire?” in his quest to win a girl, it is bland, apolitical, and uncontroversial. There is very little that would challenge our comfort levels or open our hearts to any cause short of nodding at the poverty of Mumbai’s slums. In other words, it is everything that Milk and Wall-E are not: a happy story that can be taken at face value and makes almost no comment on the current state of the world. In a dark time for the economy and global warming and in the wake of a major setback for gay liberation in last year’s elections, the film allows is sublimely neutral.

That said, there is not much else going for Slumdog Millionaire. It is a fairly routine rags-to-riches story of tragedy and struggle. Director Danny Boyle is careful to show the audience pieces of violence and tragedy without the gruesome details that one would find in the Coen brothers version or the sex that almost any other director would include. There is also precious little intensity or character development. There is nothing artful or interesting about the cinematography and the yellow lighting in the torture scene is sickening not for its mood but for its triteness.

Still, Slumdog Millionaire is better than almost anything out there and a fun albeit mild bit of entertainment for a Saturday night.