Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is getting a head start in the Oscar race today (Wednesday), and judging from some of the reviews, its rivals may never catch up. As Michael Phillips observes in his review in the Chicago Tribune, the movie "has a good shot at winning this year's Academy Award for best picture, if the pundits, Allah, Shiva and Fox Searchlight Pictures have anything to say about it. Each life-or-death cliffhanger and meticulous splash of color, every arrow plucked from director Danny Boyle's sari-wrapped quiver takes aim at the same objective: to leave you exhausted but wowed." Roger Ebert concludes his four-star review of the movie in the Chicago Sun-Times by remarking, "It is one of those miraculous entertainments that achieves its immediate goals and keeps climbing toward a higher summit." And this is Claudia Puig's conclusion in her review in USA Today: "The beautifully rendered and energetic tale celebrates resilience, the power of knowledge and the vitality of the human experience. Horrifying, humorous and life-affirming, it is, above all, unforgettable." Lou Lumenick starts his review in the New York Post this way: "Four stars simply aren't enough for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which just may be the most entertaining movie I've ever labeled a masterpiece in these pages. Great movies transport the audience, and this one left me floating on air." But in an odd review, Manohla Dargis in the New York Times rains much praise on the movie during two thirds of her review but suddenly expresses reservations: "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)," she writes. Boyle, she concludes, "plucked my heartstrings in Slumdog Millionaire with well-practiced dexterity, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note." And Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle discovers too many false notes: "The filmmakers' motives are sincere. The story is interesting enough," he observes. "Yet the whole construction is tied to a gimmicky narrative strategy that keeps Slumdog Millionaire from really hitting its stride until the last 30 minutes. By then, it's just a little too late."