Dev Patel plays Jamal Malik, a kid from the slums in India, who runs away with his brother during his brother, and experiences all the worst of Indian life. He gets on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and manages to answer all the questions. We see him playing the game, and each question references a part of his life where he learns the answer. So, the tagline is that by strange flukes in his life, he happens to know all the correct answers to win the game. (If that doesn't make your head spin, it is convenient that he has learnt all the answers to the game in chronological order).
Malik's a good kid, and doesn't want to get in any trouble. A lot of people seem to have taken offence to the title 'Slumdog Millionaire', and the various bad images it sends out about life in India. Everyone is either corrupt or powerless to stop the drug lords. Here, Dev Patel is really out of his depth. Better known to many as Anwar in C4's Skins, his face shows none of the signs of a boy with a truly difficult childhood. He acts, looks, and sounds like a posh colonial English boy travelling in luxury through the slums of India.
Anil Kapoor (Prem Kumar) is the show's gameshow host, and in a boringly obvious twist, he himself has a background of poverty and abuse, and does his best to spite Malik as gets suspiciously near the grand prize. He is the one redeeming feature of this film, and acts as a slimy and two-faced man, with a troubled past and a shallow existence. Kumar does a great job of making our skin prickle as he smiles to the audience in a disquietingly underhand showmanship way. Quite how this film deserved such a host of awards, I don't know. It's certainly no City of God in terms of cultural analysis, and Patel is far too weak to be able to say the film is carried by his acting. ★★
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