Count me as part of the Slumdog Millionaire backlash. It's not that it was a bad film. It's just that, well, Dennis Lim is right:I would contend that the movie's real sin is not its surfeit of style but the fact that its style is in service of so very little. The flimsiness of Simon Beaufoy's scenario, a jumble of one-note characterizations and rank implausibility, makes Boyle's exertions seem ornamental, even decadent... A slippery and self-conscious concoction, 'Slumdog' has it both ways. It makes a show of being anchored in a real-world social context, then asks to be read as a fantasy. It ladles on brutality only to dispel it with frivolity.Slumdog Millionaire is really two movies: 'Slumdog' and 'Millionaire.' Slumdog is a grim depiction of acute poverty, ethnic violence, and the terrible havoc deprivation wreaks on men's souls. It is powerful, and some, if not all, of the characters are richly drawn. The relationship between the brothers is complex and compelling. The cinematography is breathtaking. But Millionaire is much worse: An unconvincing and poorly drawn fantasy. The love story makes little sense, and mistakes a near-pathological fixation for romance. The game show vehicle is smart, but undeveloped: It's a self-conscious narrative gimmick, which is rather the worst kind. That said, it has a purpose: Slumdog and Millionaire don't hang together, but Millionaire has allowed a fundamentally despairing tale to be sold as an uplifting fable. The theatres would not be nearly so full if the movie were sold as a relentless tale of third world despair. And it's either to the filmmaker's credit or shame that Millionaire ends up unable to detract from Slumdog: Walking out, you know full well that there are a lot of slumdogs, and very few millionaires.That said, David Roberts is right. The music astounds. Probably my favorite character in the movie.Consider this an Oscars open thread: For my part, I'm still pulling for Wall-E to win best picture as a write-in.
