Rating: ****/5

This is one of the best films I’ve caught this year! And I’m not saying this only because it got 8 Oscars, I watched this before the Oscars came out. It’s both funny yet realistic, grimy yet beautifully shot, and it definitely helped when the actors were rather photogenic as well.

‘Slumdog’ is a local reference to people who grew up in the slums. Our ‘hero’ here, is a little boy, orphaned from young, who grew up with his brother in the slums. Here, this person whom you’d never expect to have undergone formal education, proper parenting or had good role models in life, is seated in the hot seat of the wildly popular ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire’. What is even more shocking is how he wins level after level after level, and ends up being arrested right before the final show for alleged cheating.

In the gruelling one night at the station where they use all methods to force/cajole/persuade a confession out of him, he recounts his life story and explains how he knew the answers for all the questions. It really is a bit of a coincidence. Yet he is so earnest in his anecdotes that the authorities can’t help but believe him.

Call me a cynic (you all know how realistically skeptical I can be right…) call me a non-romantic, but I was really ‘huh’ by the reason why he wanted to do the show… It was so that his beloved could know where he was and come to him… Okay maybe for him, his girl was the only reason he lived and breathed… Anyway thankfully the film had a happy ending, and of course they had to had one of those dancing sessions a la Bollywood!

Very entertaining film indeed! Worth every second of my time!