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Slumdog Millionaire
Fox Searchlight Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures

Slumdog Millionaire reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 86 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.0 out of 10
based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 292 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for some violence, disturbing images and language

Starring Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, and Irrfan Khan

Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show’s questions. Intrigued by Jamal’s story, the jaded Police Inspector begins to wonder what a young man with no apparent desire for riches is really doing on this game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out… (Fox Searchlight)


GENRE(S): Comedy  |  Drama  |  Romance  
WRITTEN BY: Simon Beaufoy  
DIRECTED BY: Danny Boyle  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: March 31, 2009 
Theatrical: November 12, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: UK | USA 
LANGUAGE(S): English | Hindi 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
New York Post Lou Lumenick
Four stars simply aren't enough for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which just may be the most entertaining movie I've ever labeled a masterpiece in these pages.
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100
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time.
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100
USA Today Claudia Puig
Director Danny Boyle's riveting and kaleidoscopic tale, based on Vikas Swarup's debut novel "Q and A," is exquisitely adapted to the screen by Simon Beaufoy.
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100
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Slumdog Millionaire is the film world's first globalized masterpiece.
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100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The story may stretch credibility until it's ready to pop its seams, but Patel conveys the simple confidence of a prodigy who has learned everything important in life, except how to lie.
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100
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
It doesn't happen often, but when it does, look out: a movie that rocks and rolls, that transports, startles, delights, shocks, seduces. A movie that is, quite simply, great.
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100
Boston Globe Ty Burr
You may even feel like dancing in the aisles yourself. Sure, the real world doesn't always work this way. Have you forgotten that this is one of the reasons why we go to movies in the first place?
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100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Slumdog Millionaire dives headfirst into something greater than a subculture - the enormous unchronicled culture of India's mega-slums - and achieves even more sweeping impact.
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100
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
A terrific yarn, one so engrossing and surprising that the nature of the story's structure -- each question Jamal gets asked on the show corresponds with a traumatic or momentous moment from his childhood -- never feels like a contrived framing device.
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100
Empire Ian Nathan
Danny Boyle's finest since "Trainspotting." In fact, it's the best British/Indian gameshow-based romance of the millennium.
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96
NPR Bob Mondello
Romantic, action-packed and always held together by an intriguing social conscience, Slumdog Millionaire is a rapturous crowd pleaser.
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91
The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson
Slumdog Millionaire features the simplest story Boyle has ever told, which may explain why its many pleasures are so pure.
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91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
This is Boyle's fullest, most satisfying work and an audience-pleaser that deserves to be a big hit.
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90
Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Like all good fairy tales, this outsize celebration of perseverance and moral triumph contains within it a deeper idea -- in this case, the relative nature of what we think we know, and what's worth knowing at all. No doubt Dickens himself would approve.
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90
New York Magazine David Edelstein
The whole thing is irresistibly preposterous.
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90
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Boyle has been nothing if not bold with this film. He's dared to use so many venerable movie elements it's dizzying, dared us to say we won't be moved or involved, dared us to say we're too hip to fall for tricks that are older than we are.
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90
Variety Todd McCarthy
Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast.
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90
Village Voice Scott Foundas
An almost ridiculously ebullient Bollywood-meets-Hollywood concoction--and one of the rare "feel-good" movies that actually makes you feel good, as opposed to merely jerked around.
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89
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant.
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88
TV Guide Jason Buchanan
A great movie is something more than the sum total of all its parts, and here, the elements all come together to form a feature that speaks a universal form of optimism that isn't likely to get lost in translation, no matter where it screens, or who is watching.
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88
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things.
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88
ReelViews James Berardinelli
The result is magical and life affirming, and will enrapture those who are not scared away by the mention of "subtitles."
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83
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Boyle, one of the premier stylists in the world fills "Slumdog" with ebullient energy and ceaseless invention.
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80
New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
It's a stunner.
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80
Film Threat Scott Mendelson
Absolutely perfect family entertainment for anyone over the age of ten. It is a celebration of not just the usual triumph of the human spirit, but a celebration of the human experience.
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80
Time Richard Corliss
Despite its elements of brutality, this is a buoyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate.
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80
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
The real star of the film is not a person but a city, the vertiginous, exciting, massively overcrowded "maximum city" of Mumbai. On one hand, this environment of Dickensian, almost hallucinatory contrasts between rich and poor, good and evil feels perfect for Danny Boyle.
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80
Slate Dana Stevens
A stylish, ingeniously constructed bit of hokum, a sparkling trinket of a movie that's as implausible as it is irresistible.
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75
Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
After last year's black-hearted "No Country for Old Men," the Oscars may well be in the mood to embrace a fairy tale sampling every imaginable genre, with a note of triumph accompanying even the worst suffering, capped by the snazziest ending money can buy.
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75
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Slumdog Millionaire is nothing if not an enjoyably far-fetched piece of rags-to-riches wish fulfillment.
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70
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale).
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70
The Hollywood Reporter Peter Brunette
What's perhaps most fascinating about the film is Boyle's relentless focus on the realities of present-day India as a vehicle for his spectacle and laughs.
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70
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
What IS surprising is the unembarrassed energy that Boyle devotes to his pursuit of the obvious; there’s nothing wrong with the formulaic, it would appear, so long as you bring the formula to the boil.
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70
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The movie brushes against some of India's worst social ills, but it's essentially a fairy tale.
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67
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The entire film has the glibness of a music video. Boyle has managed to make dire poverty seem glossy.
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50
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Doesn't hit its stride until the last 30 minutes, and by then, it's just a little too late.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 292 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Steven L gave it an8:
@ Aaron: since when does a Danny Boyle flick that cost 5 million dollars provided by Warner to produce constitute a "low-budget independent flick"? I'll agree that Slumdog was thoroughly engaging and overall satisfying, and would recommend it to others. Best picture of 2008? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly hits a chord.

erin gave it a10:
This was one of my favorite movies of all time. It showed you just how violent and poverty-stricken the slums of India are, it showed you the fierce hatred between Hindus and Muslims, it even showed you the lives of children living in India. Apart from nerve-tingling violence (a boy getting his eyes cut out, a girl getting a knife slashed across her face, a young boy killing a man with a revolver, a young boy getting beaten harshly by a guard, people setting a man on fire, a boy getting electrocuted) there was a very strong and great message to this movie. There was also slight sexual refrences, but they were very mild (a boy leading a girl into a room, girls dancing scandaly, boys walking through an alley of prostitutes, but not giving them money, although they walk in on a couple but it does not show anything). I thought the acting in it was spectacular. The children playing young Jamal, Salim, and Latika were outstanding, convincing you they truly lived in the slums of India, as well as the older versions convincing you their lives had slowly panned out and changed them into very different people by a sequence of events. There was slight cussing as well (the b-word, d-word, and s-word said only a couple times). But the themes of the movie, you could not help but feel heartbroken at how the children were living in such a poor, violent situation. Being beaten for hardly no reason, having to search through trash heaps, live in such a polluted area...it was incredibly heart-wrenching. There are a few disturbing events, such as a boy jumping into a waste mound, a boy getting his eyes scooped out with acid, a girl dressed up as a hindu god with several disgusting piercings, a boy getting hot chili peppers stuck down his pants, and many others. But apart from the violence and slight sexual references this movie taught me how truly lucky I am to live in such a free country, where people can't take me away to try to force me into gangs to shoot people, or to work as a prostitute. It also showed that just from your experiences, even if you are a "slumdog" from India, if you have traveled places or learned things from your experiences, you can know just as much as a rich gameshow host. :)

caporegime gave it an8:
Danny Boyle turned a simple plot into a superb movie. Not every director has that kind of talent. Not every plot turns into a well done movie. One of the best movies this year.

Steven H gave it a4:
I was waiting for them to get gunned down by the gang at the end, but when they didn't, and especially after the credit sequence, I decided that this is one of the most overrated films ever.

Aaron R gave it a9:
I rarely watch independent films. When Persepolis was released, I had no desire to go and see it. After hearing about all the Oscars that Slumdog won, I figured I'd order it on demand. I have never been so happy to spend $5 and 2 hours for a movie. Not only did it hide its low-budget production extremely well, but it said to the major Hollywood producers, "Get off you're lazy asses and make a good movie! We made one without all the high-tech equipment, why can't you do the same?!" I would have given this movie a 10 but I felt that the love story was unoriginal, which is not a bad thing; I just would have liked it even more had it been 100% original. Due yourself a favor and watch this movie. It definitely lives up to the hype.

Lief S gave it a7:
Ok after hearing enough about; I finally checked it out and discovered that it is definitely over hyped but not as bad as some critics are claiming. It was different; which is more than I can say about most of the movies that have been coming out. That is why the wrestler and itself got so many nominations or won something. As for the movie there were definitely some corny/ dry scenes but not enough to have pushed this movie score below a 5; so if you fell asleep watching, its not the movie; its your narcolepsy. Anybody giving it a 10 needs to realize that there r a few numbers between 0-10; because you enjoyed it doesn't make it a perfect movie.

Chris S gave it a7:
If you are one of those people that has problems with plausibilility, you might have problems with this movie as I did. Was it gritty realism or an idealistic romance?

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