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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
54
Battle in Seattle
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
70
Black Balloon, The
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
51
Breakfast with Scot
63
Changeling
84
Christmas Tale, A
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
64
Eden
xx
Extreme Movie
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
80
Frost/Nixon
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
31
Hounddog
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
47
How About You
70
Hunger
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
78
I've Loved You So Long
64
JCVD
28
Lake City
82
Let the Right One In
32
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
89
Man on Wire
34
My Name Is Bruce
29
Nobel Son
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
85
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Let the Right One In
80
Frost/Nixon
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
70
Black Balloon, The
70
Hunger
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
JCVD
64
Appaloosa
64
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
32
Let Them Chirp Awhile
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
29
Nobel Son
28
Lake City
28
Fireproof
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Local Color
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Slumdog Millionaire
Fox Searchlight Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures
 |
|
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: |
Theatrical: November 12, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
120 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK | USA |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
English | Hindi |
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.
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time.
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.
100
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Slumdog Millionaire is the film world's first globalized masterpiece.
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.
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.
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?
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.
96
NPR
Bob Mondello
Romantic, action-packed and always held together by an intriguing social conscience, Slumdog Millionaire is a rapturous crowd pleaser.
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.
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.
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.
90
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
The whole thing is irresistibly preposterous.
90
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast.
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.
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.
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."
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.
80
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
It's a stunner.
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.
80
Time
Richard Corliss
Despite its elements of brutality, this is a buoyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate.
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.
80
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.
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.
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.
75
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Slumdog Millionaire is nothing if not an enjoyably far-fetched piece of rags-to-riches wish fulfillment.
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).
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.
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.
70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
The movie brushes against some of India's worst social ills, but it's essentially a fairy tale.
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.
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.
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.9 (out of 10) based on 49 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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