Slumdog Millionare. What was all the fuss about?

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I watched this film tonight after resisting initially due to the mass hysteria surrounding it, and though I did think it good and am glad I backed down and watched it, I was left wondering how it managed to produce the amount of hype it did. I haven't known another film to be THAT hyped in recent years, apart from Avatar and maybe The Dark Knight, and though I can see why Slumdog Millionaire won people over and did well - beautiful cinematography, music, good writing, etc - I'm still baffled why it was fawned over to SUCH an extent.

Was anyone else left feeling the same way after viewing?
 
I felt the same, and the OH fell asleep during it. Another one that was hyped up was Twilight, I didn't watch it til a couple of weeks ago!! And hated it too!!
 
It was 'fawned' over for the reasons you mentioned, but also because of the 'story' it had behind it. The film initially struggled to find a distributor, but managed to go on a grab the eight Oscars!!! Something like that will definately get people talking. Also, there was a certain amount of pride in this country that a British film had defeated the Hollywood studio system.



You cannot include Slumdog and Twilight in the same sentence!!! Slumdog is energetic modern day fable, whereas Twilight really is one of the worst films I've ever seen!!!
 
Haha yeah you're right, I just gave Twilight a mention as it was so hyped up as a great film but I didn't like it!! :o

Slumdog Millionaire is a far more superior film but I still didn't like it. Maybe because I was expecting it to be more upbeat or something, I don't know. The accolades and attention it got just didn't seem justified imo. But I agree that the fact it was such an outsider at the beginning of all the Oscar talk and it was a British film that triumphed over Hollywood did bring it all the hype rather than the actual film!
 
Although the film was entertaining enough, it wasn't what I was expecting Trailers and reviews made it out to be "feel-good" and upbeat when it wasn't!
 
I knew it was darker than the trailers suggested after reading reviews and comments on here but I was still expecting a lot more dancing and a lot more colour.

Trailers are almost always extremely misleading, though, so I shouldn't be surprised.
 
Also there's a subtle underlying racism in the idea that Slumdog was over-hyped. I'm not accusing anyone here of being racist but I seriously doubt that anyone would have criticised a Hollywood film for getting the same amount of marketing activity that Slumdog got. It's very unusual for a British film with an almost entirely non-white cast to attract huge mainstream audiences.
 
I don't think the fight for a distributer had much to do with it. The "average" cinemagoer doesn't care about that stuff.

I think people were ready for this kind of film and maybe even crying out for it.

1) We have had years of SFX led films. This was one that had them but they weren't led by them.

2) In a similar vein to the last point, we have been awashed with comic book superhero and similar type of films for years.
It's interesting that the people that really loved Slumdog were the older people. The ones that often want a film with substance and not just one explosion or SFX shot after the other.

3) It wasn't another horror film in the "Saw" style which is already starting to look over-done.

4) It was well written, directed as the OP stated and it also had a rare thing for films today and a proper storyline running throughout the film and not one that goes two thirRAB of the way and then seems to slow down, run out of steam or get lost at the end.

5) It was a love story that wasn't yet another rom-com which again made it refreshing. IMO that was part of the appeal of Titanic. The first half of the film was a love story and not full of silly funny moments you get in rom-coms.

6) There wasn't the impeding hype attached to the film. Unlike something like TDK, Alice, Potter, Twilight etc where the build up and anticipation goes on for months, sometimes years this one had none of that. It opened got great reviews and it grew from word of mouth. I first saw the trailer weeks before any reviews were printed and had decided I fancied the film.
Lots of critics, reviewers and the people that worked on the film "Cabaret" said one of the biggest things the film had going for it is it wasn't filmed in Hollywood. The movie execs. couldn't just walk onto the set. They couldn't get a look at the daily rushes, they were allowed to get on with it and make the film they wanted.
This film had the same. It was filmed in India, there wasn't execs on their backs it got made very quietly and slipped under the radar so when it was finally released to the public and reviewers it was done so as an unknown quantity and with no baggage.

7) It had an unknown cast. I know the host is a star in Bollywood but to the rest of the world he isn't a star. This lack of a star name again made the film stand out. It wasn't just another film.

8) It was a film that had it's dark moments without going to the extreme. It went there but didn't get very graphic. When the brother decide he wanted the girl and affectively forced her you never saw a sex scene. It never really got gratuitous. There wasn't wall-to-wall "F worRAB."

In many ways this was a return to an older style of film which appealed to the older cinemagoer.

9) It was really popular with women. Mamma Mia managed to get a lot of women to go to the cinema who wouldn't normally and when the word of mouth and they "hype" built up they wanted to see it. Had they not gone to see Mamma Mia and again found how much they enjoyed going to the cinema I think many of them would have waited for it to come on TV or DVD.

TDK and Avatar were anticipated as will many others in the next few years. It will probably be years, maybe decades before they'll be another film that will get that kind of reaction after coming from nowhere.
 
Yeah Slumdog was over hyped, but then thinking back at Oscar time several films like Shakespeare in Love, Million Dollar Baby were over hyped as well.

It wasn't a bad film, but at the end of a day I think it was sort of like an Screen One(one off TV drama) stretched to movie length time.
 
Lots of people expressed annoyance at the hype Avatar got and is still getting.

I've seen comments from people who didn't think The Dark Knight lived up to the hype at all.

I really can't see how racism of any kind has anything whatsoever to do with some people's less than impressed reactions to Slumdog?
 
I really liked it a lot, but then I saw it before the hype. I always did think the slogan 'The feelgood movie of the year' was totally misleading. Anyone who watched it with that expectation was bound to be disappointed. It had a lot more substance than that slogan suggested, which to me is a good thing, but to someone expecting a lightweight Bollywood-style musical it might not be.
 
Good story, likable charactors, amazing scenery and a superb soundtrack. It was beautifully shot and shown India in a way it's not been shown before. Worthy of the hype imo.
 
That`s the problem with hype....your invariably disappointed.......but it gets bums on seats and that`s the bottom line as far as the promoters and studios are concerned......If you had`t been aware of the hype or read the reviews and had watched the film cold without any preconceptions, then what would you have thought of it ?.....There`s a good chance you`d have thought it was a decent film.....maybe even a very good film...or possibly even the best film you`d seen in years..... and then maybe you`d have even told all your frienRAB about this amazing film you`d just seen......who knows.

I won`t bore you with the circumstances but I saw the original Alien;Terminator and Goodfellas when they were first released without reading any reviews or being aware of the hype surrounding these films.....I was blown away by all three....I often wonder what my opinion would have been if I`d walked into the cinema with a head full of promotional hype....would I have been disappointed??......would I have walked away wondering what all the fuss was about???...who knows.
 
It's worth remembering that hype means hyperbole or in other worRAB exaggeration. The claim that Slumdog was "the feelgood film of the decade" was clearly a massive exaggeration and has been rightly discredited, but there wasn't much else in the film's publicity to criticise.

That's why I am suspicious of the way that every time there's a thread about Slumdog, several posters will comment on how over-hyped it was and how they didn't go to see it because of all the hype. Think about how ridiculously over-the-top the publicity is for almost every Hollywood film and compare it with how Slumdog Millionaire was marketed.
 
So people who didn't want to see Slumdog because of the hype were, deep down, having some sort of racist-based reaction? Even if they were/are unaware of that?

How daft. As I said, some people had similar feelings toward the hype surrounding Avatar and The Dark Knight...shouldn't that alone completely discredit the racism argument for Slumdog which you appear to have pulled out of thin air?
 
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