Slumdog Millionaire

DVD, 2014

Call number

DVD-DRAMA 119

Collection

Publication

Fox Searchlight (2009)

Description

Jamal Malik is an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" When the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating. Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up. He describes their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Every chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show's questions. Jamal's increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show's seemingly impossible questions. When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers watch to find out if he can answer the question of how anyone comes to know the things they know about life and love.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member papacromer
Danny Boyle (Sunshine) directed this wildly energetic, Dickensian drama about the desultory life and times of an Indian boy whose bleak, formative experiences lead to an appearance on his country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Jamal (played as a young man by Dev Patel) and his
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brother are orphaned as children, raising themselves in various slums and crime-ridden neighorhoods and falling in, for a while, with a monstrous gang exploiting children as beggars and prostitutes. Driven by his love for Latika (Freida Pinto), Jamal, while a teen, later goes on a journey to rescue her from the gang's clutches, only to lose her again to another oppressive fate as the lover of a notorious gangster.

Running parallel with this dark yet irresistible adventure, told in flashback vignettes, is the almost inexplicable sight of Jamal winning every challenge on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," a strong showing that leads to a vicious police interrogation. As Jamal explains how he knows the answer to every question on the show as the result of harsh events in his knockabout life, the chaos of his existence gains shape, perspective and soulfulness. The film's violence is offset by a mesmerizing exotica shot and edited with a great whoosh of vitality. Boyle successfully sells the story's most unlikely elements with nods to literary and cinematic conventions that touch an audience's heart more than its head. --Tom Keogh
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LibraryThing member comfypants
An Indian boy from the slums is accused of cheating on a quiz show.

Immediately after watching it I was thinking I'd give it either a B or A. But the more I think about it, the less I like it. The movie spends a lot of time getting us good and appalled over the way the poor are treated in India, the
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idea that people who have nothing are worthless, but in the end it ends up reinforcing that same philosophy by having fate bend over backwards to give a nice guy fabulous wealth. Basically, the lesson to be learned isn't that the lower classes are people; it's that the protagonist won his money because he's better than the lower classes.

Concept: B
Story: C
Characters: C
Dialog: A
Pacing: B
Cinematography: D
Special effects/design: A
Acting: B
Music: B

Enjoyment: C plus

GPA: 2.7/4
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Awards

Academy Award (Nominee — Best Picture — 2008)
Critics' Choice Movie Awards (Winner — Best Picture — 2008)

UPC

024543574415
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