there’s a feeling in general, and certainly one that’s come up on this thread, that being a ‘feel-good film’ buys a movie a certain amount of slack, that we have lowered expectations of a feel-good film.

but feel-good films needn’t be bad – it’s not an either/or situation. there are a whole lot of films that make me feel good, and (less subjectively put) which follow an uplifting arc, that are very very good as films overall. ‘Kolya’, for example, is a complete ‘feel-good’ film, by every definition and it manages to inhabit similar kinds of terrain to that which Slumdog Millionaire merely uses as a set – that of societies in transition, the decisions people make when faced with poverty, loyalty to family clashing with brute survival, the effects of political upheaval and so on.

anyway.

d

“Strictly speaking, there are no surprises in this movie, and most people will be able to predict, within the first ten minutes, roughly how the last ten will pan out. 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.”

everyone else just seems to have got excited that there’s finally a bollywood movie they can enjoy without nhaving to contend with the embarassment of a fat guy in a turban singing while floating on clouds. this movie is gritty!! real!! tough!!

the trainspotting ambience of the vignettes serves a couple of purposes – first, it gives free ‘cool’ to a story that could just as easily have been told through the medium of a large, carboard book with VERY. BIG. LETTERS, and and second, it disguises the fact that even the narrative within each vignette never rises above the level of dickens at his worst.

i may just be a total misanthrope, and incapable of the finer human sentiments, but it seems to be a very cheap trick to serve up the kind of junk that’s on display in this film, and take cover behind the overwhelming suffering imputed to the characters, to avoid criticism of the superificality with which their story is told.

basically, the discussions online (not just here) seem to consist of:

how can you not like it??? poor people! indians!! suffering! don’t you want them to be happy? etc

In the end though, it just seemed churlish to hate it. It’s got a real energy to it. And though for sure there are inconsistencies in the central character (how does a slumdog end up working in a call centre?) it certainly seemed to me he was a character, who grew.

As for why it is bad… well, as I said in my first post, the characters are unmotivated and two-dimensional – that’s my main gripe, I suppose. Also, as daelm says above, I think the film makes claims for seriousness that it doesn’t back up. This relates to the feel-good argument – people seem to be crediting the movie for showing poverty and pain in the beginning and somehow thinks this makes it more complex than it really is. It’s a rags-to-riches story where the hero gets the money and the girl at the end. The cinematography and editing are good and the location is exotic so it’s visually interesting, but that’s all superficial.
Does it say anything about modern India?* Do the characters have any weight? Does it reflect the human condition in any serious way? Is there any sort of existential dilemma at the heart of the film? Does it embody an interesting and original theory of the art of cinema? In what way does it rise above the template?

*OMG, poor people! doesn’t count

The reason you keep me going on this is that you kinda side with daelm here:

it is a bad film masquerading as a good film,

which puzzles me immensely. Is there a ‘deep structure’ to movies that movies need to have for them to be ‘good’? If so, how can you know whether that ‘deep structure’ is there as, assumably, any direct evidence could be just a question of ‘masquerading’?

PS: we can go on & on with factoids, your original claim was absurd

All this proves is that (a) actors don’t matter SFA if there’s a good enough director and (b) india isn’t too different to America.

the characters are flat, undeveloped and one-dimensional. the film goes from scene to scene with no real pace, each scene has more or less the same (monotonous) tempo and more or less the same structure – build-up, tension, pat resolution, end. what’s annoying is that it hides these flaws under good cinematograpgy and faux-naturalism. the pesudo-grittiness of each vignette is expected to make up for the lack of real characters and the lack of real story.

the film takes adavantage of an interest in bollywood that’s been growing for a while to represent itself as more than it is and is basically dishonest. the films makes (visual) claims to being more than merely cardboard rubbish – makes claims on the audience, that is – but doesn’t deliver. despite liking it, i felt cheated after watching it, like i’d been palmed off with junk food after being promised a meal.

if you don’t believe this, consider that you could replace the two indian leads with brendan fraser and anne hathaway, without any significant rewrite and the movie would proceed exactly as it currently does, without a hitch.

would you still think it was brilliant then?

Of course it’s a bloody feel-good film*; that’s the point. Quite what difference that makes to judging the film is beyond me. It is possible for a feel-good flick to be a good film.

• Unless you have an unusable over strict definition of fell-good.