Feb 23, 2009 02:49 PM
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(Updated Feb 24, 2009 12:36 AM)
I am a movie-illiterate. The last movie I saw was in 1973. Recently when I visited USA I went to Imax theatres and watched Imax movies. I was watching and reading about 'Slumdog Millionaire'. I was searching Internet to find about various reviews by different country people.
I though I will share the one I found interesting written by Mr. Peter Suderman, It goes on like this..."Slumdog Millionaire is the most overrated movie of the year.There are times when it's embarrassing to be a movie critic.
Critics are an unusual bunch, a cantankerous breed for whom the dictum "if you can't say something nice, then don't say nuthin' at all" never stuck, and who tend to cultivate attitudes of skepticism and chilly distance. Understandably, they are often cast as fun-o-phobic curmudgeons whose only delight is in slagging the simple, popular pleasures that roll off Hollywood assembly lines each year.
Nonetheless, there rare moments in which the nation's cranky cinephile legions find their steely exteriors mysteriously penetrated, and join together to praise some lucky motion picture for its verve, its energy, and maybe even its heart.
The result is a slobbering critical one-upmanship, in which writers compete to offer the most obsequious, over-the-top praise."Rapturous." "A celebration of perseverance and moral triumph." A "one-in-a-million paradox" with "sweeping impact." Listen to them sing! This happens only once every few years, and it is a sight to see.
This year, the caustic hordes have coalesced around Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. Shot in Mumbai on a smallish budget with a cast of unknowns, Danny Boyle's frenetically stylish story of a boy who wins millions on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire while pursuing his one, true love has earned a slew of unadulterated — and undeserved — raves.
A quick scan through the critical reactions on a review aggregator like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes reveals a fountain of excessive praise, as if, with the year's end approaching and the award-movie field looking paltry and weak, many critics found themselves in possession of use-it-or-lose-it superlatives and decided that Slumdog was their only chance to get rid of them.
Ebert labled it "breathless and exciting, " while the Boston Globe's Ty Burr appeared even giddier, writing that, "you may even feel like dancing in the aisles yourself." The New York Post's Lou Lumenick seemed actively annoyed with the critical limitations imposed on him by the four-star system, exclaiming that "four stars aren't enough" and that the movie may be "the most entertaining movie I've ever labeled a masterpiece."
At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Steven Rea resorted to tossing out action-verbs like candy at a Christmas parade: "a movie that rocks and rolls, that transports, startles, delights, shocks, seduces." Rea might've also mentioned that, apparently, it liquefies the critical capacities of those watching.Or, to put it another way: Slumdog's raves are ridiculous and mind-numbing, and after reading them you may even feel like shredding the newspaper into pieces yourself.
Sentences are not enough to describe the reviews this movie is getting, which may be the most undeservedly fawning of the year. The reviews huff and puff; they irritate, exaggerate, ingratiate, put off.Hey, wait a minute! Is that overstatement? Sure. But no more so than any of the slavering reviews the movie has inspired.And there's no explaining it either.
Slumdog isn't a terrible movie, but it's sappy, suspense-free, and packed with one-note characters, including a female lead who's more object than person. In terms of violence, it's grittier than most similar pictures, but mostly in a desperately "edgy" way that seems designed to gloss over its blatant sentimentality.
The best you can say about it is that it's stylish schmaltz.Danny Boyle, who made his name directing the gonzo drug picture Trainspotting, is a consummate stylist, and Slumdog's best moments are the flashy, setpiece montages Boyle's created out of subconscious blasts of film and high-energy pop music, including several tracks by acclaimed international hip-hop act M.I.A. But briefly exhilarating as these sequences are, they're not movie moments, they're music videos, and they don't make a movie.
(My wife who is also movie illitrate asked me a funny (?) question after watching about it in TV "Why they are considering the slum people as dog?" I couldn't answer her...but I am sure some of you can answer this question!)
