Shawn's Slumdog Millionaire Review

2008 Movie #156 - Slumdog Millionaire

Let’s keep the award movies coming! This was one of the biggies. It’s made just about every 2008 top 10 list I’ve read. Not to mention the tons of nominations it’s gotten/is bound to get. That’s a whole lot of hype for a movie to live up to. I was pretty positive it could never manage to meet the high expectations I set for it. What do you know? It pulled it off.

First of all, I love the narrative device this movie uses. It has the main character on the India version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire being interrogated for cheating since he is winning big on the show. The movie consists of him telling the stories about how he knows all of the answers to the questions. These all lead to flashbacks of his life. Each story is interesting and will really have you wanting to know just what is going to happen.

Few movies can draw you in like this one did. This is one of those movies where things just HAVE to work out for all of the characters…except for maybe one. I don’t think I have felt this strongly about 2 people ending up together since Wall-e. I’m pretty sure this son of a bitch got me to the edge of my seat, especially in the finale. Slumdog Millionaire is just an example of fucking great storytelling. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen and puts most of the stories from 2008 movies to absolute shame.

I was very impressed with the acting in this movie, particularly from the boys who portray the main characters when they are younger. They do a fantastic job. Of course all of the adult versions are good as well. There really isn’t a weak performance in the bunch.

The movie also looks great. The scenery and everything is fantastic to look at. Yep, that’s that paragraph.

Slumdog Millionaire manages to live up to a huge amount of hype, and even surpasses it in some ways. It’s a shame it took until the end of the year to get some more movies of this quality but I would say this is one that is worth the wait.

****1/2 / 5