2009 Oscars - Review of Slumdog Millionaire

So recently I finished downloading Slumdog and sat down with a friend to watch it in its entirety: Slumdog Millionaire, winner of 2009's Best Picture Oscar.


The movie was better than average. Not best picture material. I'm not going to give out any spoilers but here's my review. Pros: Slumdog paints a vivid picture of the slums of India and the wars going on between the muslims and hindu's in India which is a realistic ad truly horrifying one. It's a good story- and it's well done. At some points the acting is even great.


Cons: Although this movie isn't "bad," it's just not Best picture material. The plot is never truly edge of your seat suspense, nor are there moments when you smile and say "damn this movie is brilliant" or more than a couple scenes that are shot beautifully and are pleasing to the eye. Some parts are hard to hear because of the accents. I won't say anything about the ending.


But let's put this in perspective by looking at previous Best Picture winners:

2007 No Country for Old Men
2006 The Departed
2005 Crash
2004 Million Dollar Baby
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2001 A Beautiful Mind
2000 Gladiator
1999 American Beauty

This movie did not have suspense like No Country, humor like Departed, insanely memorable plotline like crash, no acting performance like million dollar baby, no visually spectacular scenes like LOTR:ROTK, and so on, and so on.


This movie is worth seeing, but this year's best picture award was truly botched.


Who would I give it to?
I haven't seen The Reader or Milk yet. Dark Knight was amazing. Gran Turino I believe is a 2010 movie. So I couldn't tell you. All in all it wasn't a strong movie year and I'd like to hear your arguement/feedback for which movie was the best of 2009.