Interested in a big screen version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Perhaps you're looking for a gritty coming of age journey? Do you like foreign language flavored arthouse dramas? Do adrenaline-fueled flashback / flashforward adventures pique your interest? Perhaps you're not fussy about genres so long as True Love conquers all? If any of this appeals to you than Slumdog Millionaire might just hit your sweet spot. It has a habit of doing that if you've been following its pre-release festival life through to its great per screen average in limited release. The rest of us can just marvel at how much high-speed juggling this frenetic Oscar hopeful does.Slumdog tells the rather hard to swallow story of a orphan boy in Mumbai --his mother is murdered very early in the picture -- who competes on his country's franchise of the global Millionaire phenomenon. Miraculously he knows all the answers without so much as a grade school education. The game show is concerned that he's cheating and, to allay their suspicions, Jamal (Skins star Dev Patel) explains how he came to know the answers. The film toggles between this investigation, the actual game show and multiple vignettes about his childhood and adolescence that reveal how he came by these very random answers.
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