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One of the urchins from Slumdog Millionaire aka the most gratuitously violent best picture ever.

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Millionaire: Not a family affair

The most unnecessarily violent Best Picture ever

There was a lot of fascinating stuff at last Sunday's Oscar show - Christopher Walken looking like a cadaver, Sophia Loren looking like a piece of plastic – but the cutest thing, of course, was the presence of those little urchins from Slumdog Millionaire, the film that ran off with all the important awards it was nominated for.

Weren't they sweet? The whole thing makes you want to take the whole family to see this heartwarming feature. Don't do it.

As I said in my last post – which triggered so many of you – this is one of the most unnecessarily violent films ever to take Oscar home.

Yes, I left out the word "unnecessarily" which messed with my meaning, but for the record, my point is that this film could have been as exhilarating as it had to be, without sustaining its one-note edgy tone and without the hero oozing snot and dripping blood during a torture scene in the first two minutes.

Thanks for the responses from those who think I don't know what movies have won Academy Awards.

Let me be clear:

Movies about war and battle – Braveheart, Gladiator, for example – need the violence to be authentic.
No Country For Old Men, a movie I didn't like but not because it was violent, is about drug wars and thus need to convey dealers' violent ethos to be convincing.
And Silence Of The Lambs works precisely because it doesn't deliver the gore it promises. Yes we see Buffalo Bill's hostage in a small room, but most of the time we're fearful of what Hannibal Lector might do to Clarice and anyone else who comes near him. He's one of the most menacing villains in the history of movies, but the genius of Jonathan Demme's approach to the story is that we never see Lecter do any of things we know he's capable of.

This year's Oscars only served to perpetuate the misconception – pumped up by the film's misleading trailers – that Slumdog Millionaire is family fare. Oscar-winning score composer A. R. Rahman speechifying about how he chose love over hate, Danny Boyle pretending to be Tigger for the benefit of his kids when he hopped up to accept, the joyful award-winning Bollywood musical numbers and, of course, the cast's endearing tiny tots accepting the best picture award - all guilty of false advertising.

Like I said, Slumdog's for adults only.

Feb 26, 2009 at 12:12 AM

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Comments

Posted by Thomas on 02/26/2009, 05:37 AM

You should read this weeks Newsweek. Someone who did escape from a slum very much like the one depicted in "Slumdog Millionaire". Shows that if anything that the movie sugarcoats a great deal of what life is like in these slums.

Posted by Thomas on 02/26/2009, 05:39 AM

Posted by KG on 02/26/2009, 10:41 AM

Wait, so a film about drug trafficking is "necessarily violent" but a film about surviving in the slums of Mumbai is "unnecessarily violent" in part because the sheer adorableness of Slumdog's cast and the "happy-go-lucky" tone of the film's ad campaigns tricked you into believing this would be a family friendly feel-good movie?

This is perhaps reason enough to be personally disappointed in the movie going experience but it's a ludicrous point on which to hang professional criticism.

Posted by Matt on 02/26/2009, 10:52 AM

Especially since the film is rated 14A, which makes it pretty clear that you shouldn't take the whole family to see it.

Posted by Sean on 02/26/2009, 12:22 PM

Why not just admit that you were wrong rather than try to justify your careless article from last week? Everyone keeps raising the (again, ridiculously obvious) point about the movie taking place largely in a slum. Which are obviously not free of violence. Should all Indian prize-winning literature then remove references to violence as well then?

Sorry that Danny (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) Boyle did not make the family fare you were looking for. Anyone with half a brain could have figured this one out even without the 14A rating.

Susan Cole is NOW's movie section's Tim Perlich.

Posted by KG on 02/26/2009, 12:27 PM

This is perhaps reason enough to be personally disappointed in the movie going experience but it's a ludicrous point on which to hang professional criticism.

Posted by KG on 02/26/2009, 12:32 PM

^Not sure why my earlier post was re-submitted right there. I was trying to reply to Sean to say "c'mon, don't insult Tim like that.

Posted by Thomas on 02/26/2009, 01:10 PM

In "No Country For Old Men" A single person goes around blowing people away many in broad daylight. The police are either incompetent or bored and seem to make no effort to hamper him in anyway. In short it is almost a fantasy of violence, violence with little or no repercussion.

In Slumdog by contrast there is a riot by Hindus which is based on real events. A brutal police interrogation and a fatal shooting. I don't think the violence in Slumdog is unrealistic. If anything the depiction of life there is somewhat sugarcoated.

I don't see how you can compare the almost pornographic , unrelenting violence in "No Country" to the minimum level of violence in Slumdog.

I've heard some criticism of Slumdog but not one that took it to task for being to violent.

Posted by Goon on 02/26/2009, 04:13 PM

"Susan Cole is NOW's movie section's Tim Perlich."

Comparable in that they both deserve to be unemployed as critics, and are both out of touch with the majority of NOW's reader.

There's a difference though. Susan both doesn't know what she's talking about and is bad at expressing it, whereas Tim mostly knew what he was talking about and yet was even worse at expressing it.

But at least the 'what the fuck is this?' car crashness of Susan's columns attract readers, whereas Tim's off putting smugness drove people away.

Posted by Goon on 02/26/2009, 04:31 PM

I'm going to quote you Susan from your last article. Granted, you did say the movie is unncessarily violent, but you flat out said

"Should Slumdog take the best picture Oscar, it will be the most violent film to do so ever."

For you to try and justify it now on the necessity of the violence is shameless retconning to cover your ass. You got owned by dozens of readers for your inept laughable article and you're trying to save face by parsing your own words.

Just admit you were retarded and move on to your next retarded statement already.

Posted by Goon on 02/26/2009, 04:36 PM

I'm going to quote you Susan from your last article. Granted, you did say the movie is unncessarily violent, but you flat out said

"Should Slumdog take the best picture Oscar, it will be the most violent film to do so ever."

Just admit you were retarded and move on to your next retarded statement already.

Posted by Mookie on 02/26/2009, 10:04 PM

'Millionaire: Not a family affair'

Most redundant title ever for a 14A film

You should be fired. Is that all you're trying to say? Because we got that from the certificate.

Get a real reviewer already.