Its a well made movie with an extremely riveting concept. The most important thing that works in this movie is how the love story is interwoven with the Who Wants to Be Millionaire game between Jamail and Anil Kapoor. The movie does hold the ability to grip you throughout and credit goes to Danny Boyle. From a bollywood perspective, its a typical rags to riches story through a new concept and its the concept that will work in India. What worked in Hollywood was this totally new way of storytelling, more like bollywood type. It is surprising to see Hollywood praise and cherish such a bollywood type of story telling. Perhaps, their view on bollywood change for the good. We might have the mismatched songs and dancing, but we also have great stories to convey. As far as acting goes, Dev Patel was pretty good and Freida Pinto quite admirable. However, the most impressive were the child artistes in the beginning. They definitely stole the show with their superb performances. Madhur Mittal, Jamail's brother, was just about okay with his shady character. Anil Kapoor was charming yet mysterious and carried out his role of a host quite smoothly. The music was truly fabulous and no one knows his music better than AR Rehman himself! Truly a genius and I believe he does deserve an oscar for the music. 'Dreams on Fire', 'Jai Ho', 'Mausam & Escape', and 'Ringa Ringa' are extremely well composed and executed. As far as the oscars go for this movie, I must admit I have seen better Bollywood movies who truly deserve an Oscar and have not. Maybe Slumdog was the best last year in hollywood but if its Oscar worthy or not is not quite clear. There is definitely some bias as far as Oscars are concerned. Oscars only seem to reward movies made by Hollywood makers themselves.
