Saturday, February 7, 2009

Much Ado About the Jhuggi ka Kutta

Yep...I'm talking about Slumdog of course. I saw it a couple of days back (late on the fad scene as usual). The thing is, with all the hype surrounding it, and all the 'Jai Ho's I had heard and seen on status messages in the last few days, I was quite excited to watch the movie. Unfortunately, I ended up being a tad bit disappointed.
In my opinion, while it's not half bad a movie, it certainly is not Oscar-worthy. It's essentially a Hindi movie with good screenplay in English, while also being a strong anti-India travel advisory. Some of the characters also look rather uncomfortable with English dialogues. For one, it's funny to hear a Hindi hardcore abuse word right at the end of a sentence in English. What I'm wondering is if the movie would receive the same attention if it had an Indian director and was a completely Indian venture.
Having said that, I also think it might just pull off the Oscars, given that it plays very well to the pseudo-spiritual Western conception of a bhookha-nanga India. While a huge chunk of the reality, that's not the only side to the coin, which unfortunately is what it looks like.

2 comments:

Changi said...

I totally agree with you. It is a typical Bollywood masala rags-to-riches script with an impossibly improbable love story thrown in. There is NOTHING Oscar worthy. The Dark Knight should win it!! And for all those who think it portrays the true India, recall the scene where the American tourists give dollar bills to our slumdog saying this is the 'true America'

Ghazal said...

Its amazing how I have the same blog post up na?

All movie connected we are now :P