Who wants to be... a mill-a-nare?

FINALLY it is relevant for me to whine about Slumdog Millionaire, the most overrated movie of all time, again. I wrote most of this about a month ago, when I was so filled with anger towards Slumdog I just needed to vent.

Today is the DVD and blu-ray release of the film that won Best Picture at the Oscars this year. And I’m pretty sure it’s still playing in many movie theaters. Don’t ask me how that works, but if you know please feel free to educate me.

Has a more mediocre film ever won Best Picture? The answer is most likely yes, but this one really stuck in my craw. People scoff at me when I refer to Slumdog as the worst movie ever, but it is simply an equal and opposite reactionary exaggeration to calling it the “Best Picture of the Year”. Although when I looked back on the list of Best Picture winners for the past 10 years, I’ve only seen half of them, so I’m probably not the most informed critic. Don’t care.

The Slumdog effect is very similar to the Little Miss Sunshine effect. Yeah, it was a good film. Yeah, it was entertaining enough. Yeah, it was different than the movies we usually see. But Best Picture? Are you mad? Do NOT call me the second you get out of the theater saying Slumdog the best movie you’ve ever seen and everyone you know has to go see it immediately, because that’s retarded. And I got no less than three of those phone calls. But at least Little Miss Sunshine didn’t win Best Picture.

The only time I’ve chosen the correct winner for Best Picture was for The Departed. But seriously, if you didn’t like the departed you should probably question your status as a human being. Because that movie was absolutely mind blowing.

I like a good underdog story as much as, if not more than, anyone/everyone. And although the content of Slumdog was a seriously mediocre underdog story with such unrealistic twists and turns, paired with a completely underdeveloped romantic relationship, the actual movie, because of it’s non-mainstream content, is also an underdog in itself. But to really be an underdog you have to at least be better than the competition to win. And Slumdog just wasn’t.

Both Milk and Benjamin Button were FAR superior to Slumdog. I didn’t even like The Wrestler that much but if I was on the Acadamy, and for some reason there were only two films nominated for Best Pitcure, and they were The Wrestler and Slumdog, I would have chosen The Wrestler, just to stick it to Slumdog.

Seriously though. Lets do a quick recap of the general plot. Jamal won a million dollars on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire because he coincidentally knew the answer to every question because of an event in his interesting/tough/slummy life. And then he was in love with this girl, who he basically hasn’t known or had any communication with since he was like six years old. Nothing chaps my ass like an underdeveloped romantic relationship in a film. Nothing (this second “Nothing” is for you, Notting Hill). Half of the meaningful shit he experienced he didn’t even go through with her. And now she’s one in a band of skanks that belong to some drug lord or gangster or whatever. I did like how she finally escaped, but please. I’m just not buying it (and I’ll buy some pretty cheesy shit when it comes to movies).

Something I do, when I watch movies and TV, is constantly predict what is going to happen next. When I’m right I get really excited, and when I’m not, the surprise of what happens instead is how I decide if I like something or not. Slumdog was completely off of my prediction path and the surprise of what happened instead was disappointment after disappointment. First of all, with all of those kids running around in the beginning, I was sure there was going to be some sort of sexual molestation going on. But no — just gauging out some eyes with a hot spoon. I usually expect/look forward to sexual molestation in the plot of a movie because I watch A LOT of Law & Order: SVU. A. Lot.

The other main thing I saw happening, which did not, was an in depth look at the corrupt government in India in which the POLICE were torturing Jamal to find out how he was cheating on a fucking television game show. COME ON! Slumdog is a poor man’s Quiz Show — another far superior film, but this one is from the 90’s, directed by Robert Redford, also nominated for Best Picture, and about the TV game show scandals of the 1950s. I’ve seen it about 30 times, no biggie. And coincidentally Quiz Show hinges on a contestant taking a dive on an easy question about which film won Best Picture that year! Feels good to come full circle, doesn’t it?

And my final gripe about Slumdog — if the Oscar winning song had been played at all before they rolled the freaking end credits, that would have been nice. Don’t save a gem like that ‘til the end. I knew the song before I saw the movie and was waiting for it patiently (or not patiently at all) the entire time. Introduce it at some point during the film and then bring it back for the end credits! Jai ho, bitches.