Slumdog

[lsanderson]

Last night I finally went to see Slumdog Millionaire. I'd liked the main actor, Dev Patel, in the first two seasons of Skins, but somehow never got around to seeing the movie. The eight Oscars kinda prodded me, and at 7:00 I ended up outside the Edina. There was a line, which was shocking, and the theater was fairly full. The movie tells a story, which seems almost shocking. There's a lot of dark, and it's not the scary dark of a Disney movie, it's more like the dark of a scary movie. But there's also a lighter side which wills out, perhaps with a wee bit too much poetic justice here and there, but still no Spider Robinson story -- without cost, without consequences, where everything is peachy keen at the end. I was happy at the end because the couple made it to the end of the movie, older and wiser, and with the gold ring.

Comments

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

I let David talk me into seeing this when we were in Mpls. I was looking for something fluffy but none of that worth two cents was available.

I almost left during the first ten minutes or so. The dark parts were hard on me.

What do you think of the youngest actors still living in the slums? I get more pissed the longer it goes on.

I thought you needed the dark

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

I thought they moved 'em all out of the slums. The whole cast got kinda famous in India.

The dark helps the movie from seeming like a Disney confection. It's basically a pretty sweet story the film is telling. The dark makes it a story instead of a layer-cake. I didn't find the dark in Slumdog as creepy as the dark in Coraline. It felt real -- nasty, vile, and dark but something the Disney Studio would never think of.