Slumdog Millionaire
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: November 12, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
84
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
34
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York PostLou 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. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia 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. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Slumdog Millionaire is the film world's first globalized masterpiece. Read full review
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. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven 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. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy 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? Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael 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. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene 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. Read full review
100
EmpireIan Nathan
Danny Boyle's finest since "Trainspotting." In fact, it's the best British/Indian gameshow-based romance of the millennium. Read full review
96
NPRBob Mondello
Romantic, action-packed and always held together by an intriguing social conscience, Slumdog Millionaire is a rapturous crowd pleaser. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
Slumdog Millionaire features the simplest story Boyle has ever told, which may explain why its many pleasures are so pure. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
This is Boyle's fullest, most satisfying work and an audience-pleaser that deserves to be a big hit. Read full review
90
Village VoiceScott 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. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth 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. Read full review
90
Washington PostAnn 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. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
The whole thing is irresistibly preposterous. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The result is magical and life affirming, and will enrapture those who are not scared away by the mention of "subtitles." Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter 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. Read full review
88
TV Guide MagazineJason 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. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Boyle, one of the premier stylists in the world fills "Slumdog" with ebullient energy and ceaseless invention. Read full review
80
Film ThreatScott 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. Read full review
80
TimeRichard Corliss
Despite its elements of brutality, this is a buoyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
It's a stunner. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Slumdog Millionaire is nothing if not an enjoyably far-fetched piece of rags-to-riches wish fulfillment. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael 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. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterPeter 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. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla 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). Read full review
70
SlateDana Stevens
A stylish, ingeniously constructed bit of hokum, a sparkling trinket of a movie that's as implausible as it is irresistible. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The movie brushes against some of India's worst social ills, but it's essentially a fairy tale. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony 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. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
The entire film has the glibness of a music video. Boyle has managed to make dire poverty seem glossy. Read full review
60
SalonAndrew 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. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Doesn't hit its stride until the last 30 minutes, and by then, it's just a little too late. Read full review
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