Slumdog Millionaire

If TV game shows had been around in the 1840s, Charles Dickens might have come up with the story of Slumdog Millionaire. A street urchin, who harbors a long-held love for a gamine, attempts to redeem himself and win the girl--only in this instance it's on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The setting may be in a TV studio in contemporary Mumbai, but there are echoes of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield.

The film is directed expertly by Danny Boyle, and edited by, no joke, Chris Dickens, in such a fashion to make the most of the tension and excitement. However, they can't quite mask the essential problem with this film, and that is the central conceit--the question the contestant receives form a road map of his life. If this were spoken aloud in a screenwriting workshop there would be rolled eyes and groans. That the film is as gripping as it is a testament to Boyle and his crew.

Dev Patel plays Jamal, who is orphaned along with his older brother, Salim. He makes friends with a girl, Latika, and the three share a hardscrabble existence. They fall in with a Fagin-like figure who employs them as beggars, do some unofficial tour-guiding at the Taj Mahal, and eventually are separated when Salim goes to work for the local gangster. Jamal ends up working at a cell-phone call center, and then finds himself on the wildly popular game show.

Each question reveals a portion of his past, as he relates to a policeman (he is suspected of cheating on the show, and the authorities want to know just how a "slumdog" could possibly know the answers). This structure is effective, but I wonder if a suspected game show cheat would really be given electric shocks. I do know that in the U.S. a key scene in which Jamal and the host, played by Anil Kapoor, have a private conversation in a men's room could never happen (contestants are carefully secluded on U.S. game shows).

Sometimes it's better to let story problems go and just enjoy the moment, and if that is done Slumdog Millionaire is wildly entertaining. It's thrilling and touching, and the music is toe-tappingly good (in a nod to Bollywood tradition, the closing credits is a full-scale musical dance number). The acting is uniformly excellent, particularly by some juvenile performers who play the principles as small children, but I was most impressed by Kapoor, who shows that game-show hosts are as oleaginous and supercilious in India as anyplace else.

Some are proclaiming Slumdog Millionaire as the picture to beat in this year's Oscars. I'm not so sure, only because it would be a first--no film that has a non-American or English cast has ever won the top prize. Though most of this film is in English, it would be by far the most exotic Best Picture winner ever.