Slumdog Millionaire

Neighbors of "Slumdog Millionaire" child actor Mohammed Azharuddin cheering as they watch the Oscars on television in Mumbai on Monday.

(Indranil Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse)

One of my favorite movies of 2008 "Slumdog Millionaire", cleaned up at the Oscars last night. As someone who watches trends on the Internet for a living, I was fascinated by the discussions last night around the movie and it's awards. First I want to point out that I love Danny Boyle and thought the movie deserved all the awards that it won, especially when you consider what it was up against(Benjamin Button...!). The movie has sparked a huge interest in Bollywood and Indian culture altogether so look for more Indian influenced movies in 2009 and 2010.

What I found most interesting as I browsed my Facebook, Twitter and blog posts last night was that most negative comments about Slumdog came from the east coast. Words that seemed common in the criticism include: manipulative (especially in reference to how it made them feel) & overrated.

This blog post from Cinema Blend probably says it best.

"Too bad it’s also a forgettable, obvious fairy tale robotically programmed to tug at the heart strings of ignorant philistines. Slumdog Millionaire might be last year’s John 3:16 for most, but it’s last year’s 3 A.M. Lifetime original shitfest for me" (Cinema Blend)

So here are my conclusions:

• My east coast friends have amazing taste in movies and my west coast friends and I are just a sucker for a fairy tale.
• Life on the east coast is just so much harder, darker and so existential that a movie with a happy ending is just an insult to their very being.
• Indian culture is just not as popular on the east coast kind of like how Mexican films (Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien) are more popular on the West Coast due to the huge hispanic culture out west.

Well I am a sucker for fairy tales and Slumdog Millionaire was a great one. So if you have not seen this movie yet go out and see it for yourself.



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