#24 – Slumdog Millionaire

It’s kind of strange, but this is slowly becoming the king of 2008. It’s won nearly every other award possible and it’s poised to win up to 10 Oscars at the time I’m writing this. There’s a reason why it has so much attention however. Slumdog Millionaire is one of the most powerful, life-affirming movies in years about a little boy from a slum that plays not only for a million dollars, but for the one woman he ever truly loved. The plot seems ridiculous at first, a young boy from the slums of India with no real education just happens to know all the answers to a game of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire apparently created by God (or Gods if your Hindu) for him to win and then has to explain how each of the answers came to him at some point in his life. The script is a little single-minded and in the wrong hands it could have been a ridiculous, almost laughable film, but Danny Boyle relishes in the main characters fortunes and misfortunes just enough for this little gem of a film to rise above what could have been obscurity to become a true classic of the modern age. You will cheer for Dev Patel at the end of this movie I guarantee you. It’s definitely a keeper.