Critic wrangle: "Slumdog Millionaire."
Half grimy portrait of Mumbai poverty, half fable by way of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Danny Boyle's new film "Slumdog Millionaire" was a hit at Toronto, where it won the Audience Award, and is a solid candidate for a sleeper hit in the new "Juno" sense of the term, given that the film's from an established director and cost a reported $15 million (cheap!). Will it sleeper its way to an Oscar nomination? It's certainly edgily feel-good; as Manohla Dargis at the New York Times puts it, "this proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable." For her, the film's visual stunning if a little too calculating: "In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit...
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