Slumdog Millionaire is a good feel-good movie, not a great one. Encomiums come in comparison to its contemporaries, and, as “it is written,” success to those who dare. Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan have indeed taken a chance with Simon Beaufoy’s adaptation of a Vikas Swarup book. The movie features a partially subtitled mix of violence against children and love enduring against great odds. It also contains not entirely chronological flashbacks as well as unknown actors in an unfamiliar cultural milieu framed within Western TV fare. And, its old warhorse plot concerns two once-close brothers on opposing sides for the prize of a childhood companion grown to desirable womanhood.

The frame which precipitates all is a Hindi quiz program, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? where previous winnings are risked if contestant Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) continues on up for twenty million rupees. It's interesting to note that despite worldwide popularity, the quiz-show format has seldom made it to the screen apart from Richard Whorf’s delicious 1950 send-up, Champagne for Caesar, and the 1994 Robert Redford Quiz Show.  

With explicit Third World poverty and exploitation of children, the handheld digital film is not for the kiddies in spite of a wrap-up that completes the promise of happiness and a kitsch Bollywood end-credit sequence. Leading such final festivities are Jamal and the goal of his many years’ search, Latika (Freida Pinto), worthy and unbesmirched after degradation.

Given this movie's surprised but growing publicity effort and groundswell word-of-mouth, viewers will probably know that the appealing young protagonist captivates his nation in an advance up the ladder of prize money from the lowest of slums. The film does an excellent job projecting suspense among all castes gathered in front of television sets or in the studio audience, and also in the dubious motivation of smarmy program MC Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor).

Prem’s contest questions are one prong for the flashbacks into the contestant’s street-life while growing up, including some humorous episodes of thinking on his feet. The forces of public order are not flattered in their methods and treatment of the lower class, but police do serve as the other prod to reminiscences. Manhandled by fat overzealous Sergeant Srinivas (Saurabh Shukla) after the Master of Ceremonies gets him falsely arrested for cheating on the air, Jamal fills in events for the Inspector (Irrfan Khan) who, convinced, orders his release and continued participation.

SPOILER ALERT

In that past, Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) and older brother Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) had witnessed the killing of their mother (Sanchita Couhdary) and torching of their squatters’ area shacks. The younger orphan’s kind heart literally takes in from the rain the equally alone Latika (Rabiana Ali). The three catch-as-catch-can companions are drafted into a ring of Dickensian beggar-thieves run by a brute who burns out boys’ eyes to make them more pitiable on the streets of Bombay/Mumbai.

The brothers escape, but, in a scene out of many movies, hands cannot quite connect, and the girl is left behind but not ever forgotten by Jamal. Years later the boys (now Tanay Chheda and Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala) trace teen Latika (Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar) to the red-light district and flee with her and money after Salim kills the same Fagin, who is now training her for dancing and worse. Big brother keeps beauty and booty, locks Jamal out, and years pass until Jamal locates the two again in the present.

The story settles into the now, alternating between television studio and seedy police station. Tension rises for small-screen viewers of the program, though movie viewers sense that this will end, not in Romeo and Juliet fashion, but in Love Conquers All between lovers and between siblings.

The film’s real social and physical injustices recede into the background, though one should not ignore them. Such vast money is, after all, surrounded by abject misery, even while the center, the comedy of romantic love fulfilled, is what warms the screen. Old-fashioned in an unusual setting, Slumdog Millionaire is about boy-and-girl, with slums and rupees being only stepping stones in the same old story. 

(Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures and rated “R” for some violence, disturbing images and language.)