Slum 'N Bling

Scripted by Simon Beaufoy of Full Monty fame, the film is based on diplomat Vikas Swaroop's novel Q and A, about an 18-year-old illiterate slumboy on the verge of winning the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Assuming him to be a fraud, the police begins interrogating him, even as the narrative moves back and forth in time to show how the kid had been using his own life experiences to figure out the answer to each of the questions.

For viewers, Slumdog has proven to be energetic, colourful and thoroughly entertaining. "The film is not shying away from pleasing the audience. It's a rollercoaster," says Irrfan who plays the role of the inspector. Critics have been as enthusiastic. Stephen Garrett in Esquire calls it "a preposterously enjoyable victory against all odds." "Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal has called it a "densely detailed phantasmagoria—groundbreaking in substance, damned near earth-shaking in style."

The Bollywood touch has not gone unnoticed either. "It's an exuberant, sometimes exhausting hybrid, bursting with violence and sentimentality, equal parts Bollywood and, well, Mr Boyle," writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times. Like Boyle's previous films this one too focuses on the underdog, but also has the epic sweep and "pure, undying love angle" of Hindi cinema. For Indian viewers, there could be an immediate connect with Yash Chopra's Deewar—Slumdog too is about two brothers who go divergent ways. Boyle is reported to have seen and appreciated films like Ram Gopal Verma's Satya and Company and Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday, before he embarked on Slumdog. "He captures the essence of these films and blends it with a contemporary, realistic narrative. In a way, he's decoding our movies, from Deewar to Satya," says co-director Loveleen Tandon. The nod to Bollywood also comes through A.R. Rahman's pulsating music, especially an exuberant item number in the end credits, shot at VT station. The film was shot on location in Dharavi, Juhu and Gorai from November last year to February.

"While Boyle immerses the viewer in the poverty and tragedy of life as an orphan's, he deftly avoids delving into the murky realm of 'poverty porn,' which treats the lives of those caught in such circumstances gratuitously," writes Kim Voynar in Cinematical. The film doesn't exoticise India either. "It shows urban India in its entire gamut—from slums to call centres to billionaires and bling. It's not the white man's point of view," says Tandon, "Boyle is apna banda, he is totally desi "