Slumdog Millionaire, Hint (Answer D: It is Written)

Well, hello. I’m Nikki. I suppose some gratitude is due to my … person of interest, Wayne, for inviting me to be an “author” on this review blog.

So now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to discuss the film Slumdog Millionaire. Recently, my friend invited me out to see it with her. I really didn’t know anything about it before buying my ticket, and even the movie poster wasn’t very helpful at giving me some plot clues. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Check. Someone running? Check. Now I’m clueless and confused. I should take this moment to say, as an aside, that sometimes seeing a movie without knowing anything about it can be pretty great. You’re more apt to be surprised, and pleasantly at that. Now I’m going to go ahead and y’know, ruin that for you.

The film starts out with a young man being tortured. It turns out he has gotten the farthest anyone has ever made it on India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, and the producers of the show are convinced he’s been cheating. After all, he was born in the slums (a “slumdog”), and makes his living basically as a gopher for some corporate types. How could he know all the answers? The police continue to torture him so that he will finally divulge how he managed to pull it off, but he simply states that he knew the answers. This is sort of the setup for the story’s format. Jamal (the main character) and the police chief go through a tape of the show, question by question, and Jamal tells a story that explains how he knows each answer. These stories also happen to paint a pretty cohesive picture of the major events in Jamal’s life up to this point.

He and his older brother, Salim, were driven out of their home village at a young age, and met up with another orphaned child, Latika. The book the brothers had been reading in school, “The Three Musketeers”, inspired Jamal to accept Latika, though Salim (kind of a bully) wanted to leave her on her own. The stories Jamal tells chronicle their adventures as a group. Though they are sometimes separated, they remain tied to each other, especially Jamal and Latika, who despite the circumstances have fallen in love. While a lot of incredibly crappy things happen to these characters (I mean, just horrible), the tone of the film remains hopeful, and while I don’t want to spoil it for you, I do want to say that the ending made me feel quite warm and fuzzy. The best parts of the movie are just the crazy situations they find themselves in, and the development of the relationships between the characters, which become pretty complex.

Overall, this movie kept me really interested, and I felt something for the characters. It was unique, and the soundtrack was awesome. It evoked a broad range of emotions; it made me laugh and it made me… sad. If I were you, I’d go see it.

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