Imagine if a Bollywood director, taking a page from Charles Dickens, made a movie about a very poor kid who moves through life first trying to survive then trying to save a girl he loves, but the story is told through an episode of India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Then you'll have Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle directed one of my favorite 2004 films Millions. Slumdog is no quaint English tale, though. The main character, Jamal, literally walks through human shit in one scene and is tortured in another. Its backdrop, the vast Indian slums where children are mutilated to evoke pity from tourists, serves as enough plot motivation for Jamal. You want him to survive and eventually thrive.
The good news: he does. But not until you go on the narrative ride of your life. This movie is all story. The characters are dim compared to the action at times.
My favorite film reviewer literally swooned over Slumdog, and my praise of the film is a little less exuberant precisely because the female protagonist, Latika, exists only in service of the plot and is not a fully realized character herself in the way the two boys are.
I still say it's Worth $10 because you have to see it on the big screen and you won't regret the ride.
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