Updated on Friday, January 23, 2009, 00:00 IST

Spicezee Bureau

Mumbai, Jan 23: ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is the story of a slum dweller Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) who finds himself in the hot-seat of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’.

Jamal is a chaiwalla in a call centre. When he manages to tell all the answers correctly, a suspicious host (Anil Kapoor) of the game show hands him to police for cheating for million bucks. When the cops fail to prove he has cheated, they (Irrfan Khan and Saurabh Shukla) make Jamal tell the story of his unusual knowledge. This brings to light Jamal’s purpose to enter the show – his childhood love Latika (Freida Pinto). The lovebirds were separated when Jamal’s cagey elder brother (Madhur Mittal) got her kidnapped by an infamous gangster for selfish gains.

The climax is whether Jamal manages to free Latika, and earn his money-bag, too!

Danny Boyle, like ever, portrays Jamal’s survival instincts to perfection. Even before, in his darkly humorous ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘Trainspotting’, his flair for the unconventional has stood out. Simon Beaufoy kinks the screenplay deftly, letting the story unfold more like life than a movie – ebbing and flowing.

Jamal’s life-story is a tragedy that should have an ugly, scarred face at best, but the story turns out to be an interestingly twisted fairytale and love-story of two poor slum-dwellers.

Altogether, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ turns out to be a heady mix of gaudy, gorgeous rush of colours, sound and motion where a pauper angles to become a prince amid the squalor of Mumbai, where lost children and dogs sift together amid the trash and refuse. In short – an ironically beautiful representation of trash amid glamour, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note that you encounter.

Four stars do justice, for art never reaches perfection!

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