Reluctant Pause
"Beautifully shot with great sensitivity to color by the cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantel, in both film and digital video, Slumdog Millionaire makes for a better viewing experience than it does for a reflective one," says N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis.
"It's an undeniably attractive package, a seamless mixture of thrills and tears, armchair tourism and crackerjack professionalism. Both the reliably great Irrfan Khan (A Mighty Heart), as a sadistic detective, and the Bollywood star Anil Kapoor, as the preening game-show host, run circles around the young Mr. Patel, an agreeable enough if vague centerpiece to all this coordinated, insistently happy chaos.
"In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale).
"In the past Mr. Boyle has managed to wring giggles out of murder (Shallow Grave) and addiction (Trainspotting), and invest even the apocalypse with a certain joie de vivre (the excellent zombie flick 28 Days Later). He's a blithely glib entertainer who can dazzle you with technique and, on occasion, blindside you with emotion, as he does in his underrated children's movie, Millions.
"He plucked my heartstrings in Slumdog Millionaire with well-practiced dexterity, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note."
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on November 13, 2008 at 12:02 PM
comment #1
actionman
says ...
Extremely anxious to see this. Sadly, it won't make it to CT for a few more weeks. I love the trailer. Looks like a very exciting movie.
Posted by actionman
at November 13, 2008 12:15 PM
comment #2
jesse
says ...
Dargis gets this exactly right -- it's an extremely well-made and entertaining movie, but despite the rapturous reviews, it isn't actually one of Boyle's best. I *liked* the "good guy" characters but wasn't particularly moved by them, and I say this as someone who was reduced to tears by Millions, a wonderful and less showy movie.
Slumdog is still one of the better movies I've seen this year, and as Dargis says, it's extremely involving while you watch it, but I'd put Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions, and maybe even Sunshine ahead of it as far as Boyle's (numerous, underrated) accomplishments are concerned. The main thing I took away from it was that (a.) Boyle is one the best genre-hoppers around; he's like a less pedestrian Michael Winterbottom or a more consistent Steven Soderbergh, and (b.) as such, he should try a musical, the way Soderbergh will soon.
Posted by jesse
at November 13, 2008 12:33 PM
comment #3
erniesouchak
says ...
Anthony Dod Mantle -- Dargis spelled his name wrong -- should be an Oscar nominee for this. Great work.
Posted by erniesouchak
at November 13, 2008 12:33 PM
comment #4
johnc
says ...
It's actually Anthony Dod Mantle. The production notes misspelled his name, and the reviews are repeating the error. Such great work deserves proper attribution. I wasn't crazy about the movie, but it certainly is beautifully shot.
Posted by johnc
at November 13, 2008 12:36 PM
comment #5
Chase Kahn
says ...
SLUMDOG is great -- there was just something there in the ending that turned me off ever so slightly -- like a Disney feeling to it all -- I couldn't really tell you. Plus, a lot of Jamal and Salim's gangsterism sidequests reminded me of Fernando Meirelles' CITY OF GOD -- which I wasn't a big fan of.
I think 28 DAYS LATER is still Boyle's best film, and feel that SUNSHINE is underrated and overcriticized...
Posted by Chase Kahn
at November 13, 2008 3:03 PM
comment #6
K. Bowen
says ...
But see, in my review I compared it to City of God, but I thought it was so much less. WHen something happens in City of God, it feels like the buildup of decades of history. When something happens in Slumdog Millionaire, it feels like a literary conceit. Which it actually is.
Plus, this isn't exactly one of the great screen love affairs. At least not for me. Dude, there are other fish in the sea.
Posted by K. Bowen
at November 13, 2008 3:55 PM
comment #7
otownroger
says ...
Personally I find Dargis a bit on the emotionally inaccessible side. Danny Boyle is quite the opposite. If you're reviewing from that defensive can't-let-this-touch-me New York Times position, well... Slumdog is a lovely, touching film, even if the lead does look a bit too much like Adam Goldberg.
Posted by otownroger
at November 14, 2008 5:51 AM
comment #8
pchu
says ...
I think Slumdog is one of the best movie of the year. Basically, it's a fantasy, shot in a style similar to City of God.
It's a dazzling, and high energy film. It's amazing how Boyle keep reinventing himself as a filmmaker.
Posted by pchu
at November 14, 2008 7:35 AM
comment #9
CitizenKanedforChewingGum
says ...
Hmm, no love for Shallow Grave in this thread yet? Big fan.
"(b.) as such, he should try a musical, the way Soderbergh will soon."
Come again? Proof? Links? Eh? Or you just talking out your ass?
Posted by CitizenKanedforChewingGum
at November 14, 2008 8:25 AM
comment #10
qwiggles
says ...
I'm a little confused by the free pass this film seems to be getting, even from critics like Dargis, who address its flaws. I guess it's a question of whether you were carried away with it or not: personally, I found the level of social commentary bafflingly simplistic -- he transcended his class...because things happened to him! -- and the character development almost nil.
Jamal goes through a lot, but what impact does any of it have on him, apart from supplying trivia answers? What kind of a life will the prize money result in for him? I felt, by movie's end, that I had no idea what he stood for apart from finding his love. His brother is a much more interesting character, who gets shuffled to the background in the interest of serving the love narrative.
And what about Latika? Their connection is explained only by their shared trauma: he takes her in when they are both in a rough state. So? What kind of rapport do they have? What kind of person lives the life she seems to have, anyway? Why are we to care about these two blanks -- the one busting the other out of her gilded cage so that they might then...what?
The Disney comparison is dead-on: the central romance is more inert than that of Aladdin. (And it has the same plot mechanics, too.)
I'd like to say these are all nitpicks, but when so much of the positive criticism focuses on the mix of its alleged hard-hitting depiction of India with a fresh Dickension narrative...
Posted by qwiggles
at November 14, 2008 5:36 PM
comment #11
janee
says ...
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Posted by janee
at May 19, 2011 1:04 AM