Slumdog Millionaire Enchants and brings some needed Bliss to the US

For anyone who has the desire to experience a bona fide Bollywood film, Slumdog Millionaire is not your answer. Slumdog Millionaire is just as colorful, dazzling, and admired as the films created in Mumbai (Bollywood sold 3.6 billion tickets last year; Hollywood 2.6 billion) but its clever structure avoids many of the clichés and corniness that have long kept Bollywood movies out of American favor.

British actor Dev Patel plays Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is just one question away from winning a the fortune of 20 million rupees on India's “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” Arrested on suspicion of cheating, he is taken by the police and tells them the incredible story of his life: from the slums of Mumbai and back again, and of the girl he loves and keeps losing, Latika, played by the beautiful and mostly convincing Frieda Pinto. The film moves from game-show question to flashback, leading a journey of Jamal’s dynamic, tragic, and vibrant life to show how is it he, a slumdog and chai-wallah, knows all the answers to the game show questions.

Amazingly, directors Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan (co-director India) manage to keep a taste of India at the films center yet westernize the overall production, with producer Christian Colson. The brilliant colors are pure India, as are most of the film’s young and talented stars, three for each character as the story builds from childhood to late adolescence. Slight tension can be felt, however, in the attempts to reconcile Western drama/comedy an Indian Bollywood magical realism. The storyline begs the questions of its level of plausibility. Luckily, the weakest moment of the film is intelligently placed in one of the more endearing montages, when the brothers magically become fluent in English while scamming Western tourists at the Taj Mahal.

The strongest element in the film is the visuals, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle captures Slumdog’s playful and shadowy spirits with a vibrancy and variety of angles that doesn’t feel too contrived. The richness of the different perspective coupled with a fun and heart-pounding music selection keeps eyes and ears dilated, eager for more life and intensity to resonate from the screen. Bollywood films, for many Americans, run along a thin line of being annoying with characteristic simplicity and perky humor that this modernized rags-to-riches fairytale does well to avoid. Instead, Slumdog Millionaire releases a sort of poignant exuberance that the American film industry has not produced in what feels like decades. Slumdog is brilliant in its exuberance and its timing—America sure needs something to smile about.