I mentioned before that I didn't love "Slumdog Millionaire" as much as most others seemed to; neither did the Onion's Noel Murray, quoted as part of the paper's year-end wrapup:
For all its kinetic style and emotional uplift, Slumdog Millionaire is a frustratingly one-note film, using its game-show framing device not as an opportunity to explore myriad accents of Indian poverty, but to tell one preposterous love story, propped up by contrivance upon contrivance. Director Danny Boyle can be somewhat excused for making a Bollywood-influenced "fairy tale," and he's to be commended for putting so much emphasis on garbage, shit, scars, and other signifiers of a hardscrabble life. But sheesh… that plot! Too many people recognize each other by voice or by sight after being separated for years; too many details of India's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire don't make sense; too many moustache-twirling bad guys complicate the hero's life for the sake of melodrama the movie doesn't need. Slumdog Millionaire has its charms, but in a way, its charms are part of the problem—the film seems to be trying too hard to make poverty relatable by equating rising out of poverty with a love that transcends all obstacles, or underdogs who beat the odds. The movie is rousing in all the wrong places.Yea, and what was up with all of the questions on 'Millionaire' being in the exact chronological order of his life? Kind of a coincidence, huh?