Mr. Pinault had the opportunity to see Slumdog Millionaire several weeks ago. “Was it, like, the best movie ever?” I asked him later that night. He shrugged. “It was good,” he said politely, Just good? Everyone swears that Slumdog Millionaire is the best movie ever! An array of cinematic awards… serious contender for the Best Picture Oscar,,. glowing, glowing four-star reviews about this feel-good fairy-tale masterpiece, and my husband merely says it’s “good?”
So today, I decided to go see it for myself. And I agree it was good. But I’ll go as far as to say it was pretty good.
Despite being filmed in Mumbai with a fair amount of Hindi sprinkled through it, Slumdog Millionaire was the purest Hollywood movie that I’ve seen in awhile: the black and white morality, the heart-string tugging by both cute kids in squalid poverty and the fulfillment of fated romance, the preposterous coincidences that mount with every passing scene, and the consummate predictable, happy ending, replete with a villanous character’s ultimate sacrifice and thus redemption. At some points I had to restrain myself from yelling “Really? Really?” in the nearly-empty movie theatre (the only other people at the matinee was an elderly couple who sat 2 rows in front of me, staring straight ahead and motionless for the duration of the 2-hour film. It was like tailgating a Buick).
Slumdog adherents will say the fantastical plot was the point, and that suspension of disbelief is an essential component of cinema, and that its unrealistic themes shouldn’t overshadow the fact that it’s an uplifting, riveting, ambitious movie. And I agree… it was pretty good.
