Slumdog Millionaire

In a cliché filled movie, what is the cliché that finally makes you realize you’ve just wasted your $10? For me it was when the three orphans were working the trash pits of Mumbai and a stranger in his VW bus gives the kids Cokes and takes them to his orphanage. Oh, no, its Dickens, I thought, and here comes Fagan. Until that moment the movie was moving along just fine, maybe a little scatological for me, but it had an interesting visual style. Now, I’ve got nothing against rewrites of Dickens, and since the world stills has more than a few Dickensian cities a reworking of Dickens is to be expected. And I was willing to give it another chance, but as the movie went on, it only got worse. The most peblen of the clichés, of course, was the lovers (two of the three former orphans) running to each other through traffic choked streets. The stupidest was the final embrace in the train station. Not only a cliché, but it made no sense since the slumdog had just won who wants to be a millionaire. I think the love of his life could have found him at the TV station. The best cliché, though, was the third orphan’s end. In a fit of remorse the third orphan, a hit man, fills a bath tube full of money in the his boss’s house. When the boss, a cartoonish supervillain, and his henchmen break in to kill him, he shoots his boss while the others kill him. It was something straight out of John Woo but sillier. So much for Dickens 2008.