Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire might be 2008's most over-praised film, an honor I had thought I would bestow upon The Dark Knight. Audiences and critics seem to love Slumdog. I understand it to a point; it's a feel-good fantasy in an exotic setting about an orphan from a hellish slum who becomes rich and wins the girl of his dreams. I like fantasy, too - but not brutally dishonest fantasy.

Isn't any fantasy dishonest? Or any and every film, for that matter? Okay, but how far do you need to take this? Some films tell you up front that they are fantasies; Slumdog tries to have it both ways. It tries to be grounded in the reality of life in hell and make it flashy and sexy, too. It "corrects" the violence, filth and savage injustices of its characters' lives with coincidence, shallow characterization, all-conquering love and lies upon lies. I am not usually bothered when popular filmmakers use colorful Third World backdrops because they rarely ask us to take their tourism seriously (in The Incredible Hulk, for instance, or the Bourne and Bond films); also, I just don't give a shit about that kind of argument. But, alas, director Danny Boyle seems not to know that he is a tourist here, reminding me of the gullible travelers in his film's Taj Mahal sequence. Yep, it's a film set in India, made by a British director - and it has a Taj Mahal sequence. Of course it does.

To be fair, Boyle's Taj Mahal sequence is not without irony. I've tended to like his work in the past and had some hopes for this film, in spite of what its ad campaign suggested to me. The first half of the film is rather charming, too, when he's following the main character as a child. In spite of the horrors of their lives, children are resilient - to a point. It's just so bleeding unlikely that everything is going to work out so well, fall so neatly into place, for anyone as an adult, let alone someone who reaches adulthood under the circumstances depicted here, that the film just goes off the rails after a certain point.

That is to say, what had been a pleasant fantasy becomes an unpleasant, treacly fantasy that stops making sense even by its own rules. As one absurdity after another piles up, I start checking out.

As for the viewing experience, tonight we sat in the Alameda's balcony for the first time, which was a novel and extremely pleasant vantage. Sadly, in the row behind us was a pair of middle-aged women who seemed to mistake the gigantic, art deco theater for their own living room. They reacted audibly to each twist and turn of the film, including simple sounds and full sentences of advice for the characters, and they occasionally struck up conversation with each other. Perhaps my reaction to the film comes in part from the fact that I was distracted both by their noise and by what I might do about it.

I considered talking to them right in the middle of the film; I also went over several scenarios for talking to them after the film was over. In this situation, if I make it through the film without saying anything, there's about a 50% chance that I will say something afterwards. This time I said, "Ladies, a little too much talking during the movie." They flattened their faces at me and sort of subtly bent back and away. I continued, "This is not your living room."

By now, Kim had practically turned into a gas in her efforts to get out of there. We left.

Look, I don't crave that kind of confrontation. I don't love to embarrass my wife, or be a dick. But if you go to the movies, SHUT THE FUCK UP. Or don't go. Those are your options. If you are too stupid to understand that, you are too stupid to attend the movies.