Slumdog Millionaire – The Most Over Hyped, Most Average Movie Ever?

Disclaimer – I am no film critic, so read this review (more of a rambling…) with a pinch of whatever it is you take J. If you agree with my views, thanks! If you disagree – sorry about wasting your precious 5 minutes!

 

Imagine its early 2009 and aliens from a distant galaxy ‘happen’ to visit earth. Technologically they are 1000s of years ahead of mankind…proven just by the mere fact that they made it all the way here J. Yet they are completely confounded in their understanding of the human mind! After researching through each and every human behavior pattern and psychology, they still cannot figure out why these homo-sapiens are so crazy about this new hit movie called ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. And it’s not as-if they didn’t do their homework!

 

Thanks to their superior screening and learning abilities, they have already internalized all the great Hollywood classics from the past eight decades. They admired the depictions of space travel in Star Wars, the portrayal of prehistoric worlds in Jurassic Park, the history lessons from Ben Hur to Gladiator; and the drama in God Father. A simple love story that translated into probably the biggest all-time movie, ‘Titanic’ also aroused their strong interest. All these movies had terrific music, direction and cinematography.

 

These aliens have even tried (admittedly, with less success) to understand India’s ‘Bollywood’ and have studied great musical works of A.R. Rahman such as ‘Roja’, ‘Lagaan’, to name a few. After all, the language of music translates across galaxies J.  They have seen stark and realistic depictions of harsh realities of urban life in the developing world, in movies such as ‘Salam Bombay’ and ‘Traffic Signal’.

 

And now they are hit with this new challenge…How in the world (Sorry, How in the Universe J  ), to explain this phenomenon of Slumdog Millionaire! I and a few others (it seems for sure…) sympathize with their predicament.

 

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the Slumdog movie, for starters. But there’s nothing, absolutely nothing great either! An average story, with hardly any plot! Music that doesn’t even come close to any of A.R. Rahman’s better efforts. Cinematography that primarily revolves around some ‘slum’ shots and some ‘train’ shots… Acting is probably the only one above average component in the movie…but calling it great, is a stretch as well!

 

For this ‘original’, ‘realistic’, ‘unique’ and ‘special’ depiction (of an extremely typical ‘Rags-To-Riches’ story format) – why is the movie stuck with those extremely stereo-typical India portrayals? Taj Mahal, Railways, Call Centers, and Slums – this theme doesn’t look that original and imaginative.

 

There is so much hype; to the point where it is getting long standing ovations?! Is the hype coming out of the doom and gloom that majority of the world finds itself today, following the 2008 Financial Crisis? Is the situation so bad, that such a movie can ‘uplift’ the mood of so many people? ‘Look at the misery around the world, and you are thankful for what you have’ – didn’t some philosopher say something like that?

 

Or has India suddenly become the flavor of the season? Or, are the rest of the movies (I haven’t watched any of the contenders) from 2008 so bad, that the juries of prestigious awards are stuck with this one?

 

Well…just as those aliens, we would probably never no! J 

 

 

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Random Thoughts – A New ‘Wall Street’ Trilogy?

Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’ made in 1987, starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen is one of my all time favorite movies. Who can forget the one and only ‘Gordon Gekko’?!

 

I was not following the financial markets back in 1987, and hence cannot relate first hand to that period. Still the way this movie captures the core human emotions; especially ‘Greed’ that transcends across generations, and multiple financial crises, is extremely revealing. And Michael Douglas is fantastic. I am surprised that a blockbuster sequel (or a set of sequels) has not been launched since.

 

Just think about it; this past decade has provided us with so many great real world plots and scenarios related to Wall Street turmoil! These should be a ‘Dream come true’ for fiction authors and script writers. They say, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’…nothing proves this dictum more than what is happening in the financial world today!

 

I am writing this short summary piece to capture my random thoughts around three somewhat distinct financial crises during this decade – with specific emphasis on representative players, events, characters, themes and people psyche, as we lived through these tumultuous periods. These three crises can together form a nice new trilogy! Maybe we can all extol the Hollywood Greats to make these into movies. (As if someone is really listening –J… I for one will definitely watch these movies and also buy their DVDs!)

 

 

1. Wall Street 1 ‘The Super Bowl Of Crazy Ads’ – The Dotcom Boom & Bust

 

Think about Super-Bowl 2000. Even though this was one of the best ever Super Bowl games, it will probably be remembered for something other than the Rams-Titans classic. Who can forget that crazy ETrade Monkey ad?! And Pets.Com? This clearly was an era of ostentatious and over the top advertising of businesses and concepts that hadn’t made a single dollar of profit!

 

The crazy atmosphere in the Silicon Valley…The BMWs as sign-on bonuses… Stock options resulting in instant multi-millionaires! The new ‘internet’ based model…The doomsday scenario for ‘Brick & Mortar’ businesses… Overnight words like ‘B2B’, ‘B2C’ entering our lexicon.

 

All this should provide a nice cocktail for a heady movie about this period. You have many rags-to-riches stories. You have Geeks; lots of them. You have teenage CEOs. You have small companies buying out industry icons! And then you have the downfall…the flawed business model, the layoffs, the lawsuits, thousands of these ‘paper millionaires’ seeing their net worth vanish as fast as it had appeared…and the tragic cases of folks who got hit by AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax)…Oh, and through all this period, those naïve average mom & pop investors who chased those ‘hot’ stocks and lost everything? Remember those days when NASDAQ had crossed 5000?! And how very quickly it was

under 2000?!

 

The media played a part too…the constant hyping about the ‘new revolution’. The ‘This time it is different…’ editorials…new magazines coming out every week…and then, as things got tough, those first references to a ‘Bubble’ with artful depictions on cover pages…Treating Allan Greenspan as a rock star…and then pulling him down into the dumps and accusing him of everything that went wrong! Those few months were just astounding!

 

 

2. Wall Street 2 ‘How The Mighty Have Fallen!’ – The Enron-WorldCom Saga

 

How the Mighty Have Fallen! This probably best captures the 2001-2002 period. First Enron, then WorldCom… From extremely complicated financial dealings and transactions to some fairly straight forward ‘creative accounting’. From shredding documents, to massive companies disappearing overnight…From backroom dealings, to whistle-blowers. The court-room dramas, the extended trials (Aren’t court-room dramas an important staple of movies in the ‘Drama’ genre?) The laid-off employees, the retirees who lost majority of their retirement savings…that small sub-segment of fired workers who posed for Playboy!

 

The sentencing, the handcuffed CEOs, the somewhat vindicated stockholders…and last but not the least, the massive overhauling of accounting standards, procedures by the regulators, including the congress, resulting in a ground-breaking legislation…this drama extends to Washington as well!

 

 

3.  Wall Street 3 ‘The Return of the Great Depression’ – The 2008 Financial Crisis

 

Well…this one, we are still living through it for the past 6 months…Critics are quick to point out that this is the worst crisis since the Great Depression! Maybe we haven’t even seen the end of the beginning! But then that shouldn’t stop moviemakers and fiction writers from creating something around it! (It didn’t stop them in previous major transformational events in history…)

 

In my view, ‘Utter Disbelief!’ is what can best describe what we are seeing around us. Who would have thought that legendary century old firms that have driven the course of not just American, but Global Capitalistic Economies and the Free Market System, should just collapse?! This was not supposed to happen in a hundred years! Even the Great Depression had spared these firms.

 

Pivotal incidents would be quite a few – Bear Stearns to Lehman…One bailout followed by the other. Freddie & Fannie, AIG, CitiGroup, the list goes on…The extremely complicated hierarchical CDOs that no one had any idea about…The absurd levels of leveraging…On one side you have these clueless CEOs, and the other side a rescue team led by a man who until recently was part of that same group! How everyone seems to act like those blind men in that ‘Blind men and the Elephant’ tale.

 

There are enough grass-roots level themes to talk about here as well…The typical suburban American family that is leading a very comfortable life by leveraging on everything from the house, cars and credit cards. The Chinese factory worker who is fulfilling the needs for the increasingly materialistic American way of life…The Indian IIT Engineer who is solving tough technology problems… (How can we forget ‘Asok’ from Dilbert?)…the stereotypical Indian call center worker… (1 or 2 Bollywood movies have already been made on this character…). There is that classic geo-political agent of brinksmanship here as well; ‘Oil’! And a presidential election to add to the mix. There are enough things here for some exciting story –J

 

 

What are your thoughts? Any good books that you have read/you can recommend about the first two crises?

 

 

 

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