Comments on: How sad that “Slumdog millionaire” is SO disappointing!

By: Anjali Menon

Anjali Menon — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:23:05 +0000

…the charade parade continued until a child cried “the emperor has no clothes on!”

The snake charmers & elephants that represented India to the foreign mind have now been replaced with slum children and terrorist attacks!

By: drsubrotoroy

drsubrotoroy — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:30:43 +0000

I think Mr Shivdasani makes an interesting point about hip hop and Disney musicals (themselves probably based on Gilbert and Sullivan!). Some academic department somewhere should have commissioned scholarly theses by now on the ingredients of the goulash that is Hindi (or Indian) commercial movie dance today. (I am not frankly sure it can be called “dance” at all in many cases, though it is synchronized movement of a certain kind.)

In the standard Hindi movie, there are obvious elements of bhangra, aerobics, pole-dancing, cabaret, pantomime, Michael Jackson moonwalking etc grafted onto the crudest imitations of Kathak and Bharat Natyam.

My point about the “Slumdog millionaire” dance at the end was that it may have been the only authentic thing there, meaning that at least that was an authentically tacky Hindi film song-and-dance sequence.

By: ryan shivdasani

ryan shivdasani — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:43:12 +0000

I am a trained musician and know something about Indian music The song-and-dance routine at the end of this movie has absolutely nothing to do with Indian music — it owes more to hip hop and Disney musicals from the 1980s. Here in the USA, I have countless Indian family members who sit around and watch this sort of rubbish music day in and day out; their being from India has not given them any more insight to the inner workings of higher art of their home country than your average All-American redneck knows about jazz. I have no idea how valid or invalid any of the meat of your review is. You are right that anyone who’s developed a taste for finer food would never choose a sandwich over an Indian meal.

By: ashika

ashika — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:15:31 +0000

I live in New Zealand and I watched the Golden Globes and as an Indian I feel so proud of “Slumdog millionaire”. I hope Indian actors get more international movie roles, after all they are as good as anyone.