Question time

Slumdog Millionaire
15, Nationwide

From the wonderful things I’d already heard about Danny Boyle’s latest film Slumdog Millionaire I was fully poised to fall madly in love with it, and perhaps even run off with it although I would not have its babies — I’m through with having babies; I had one once, a boy, and 16 years later I still can’t shrug him off — but it never really came to that. It’s probably all my fault, as these things so often are, but I could not love Slumdog. I liked it as a friend but the chemistry just wasn’t there. I don’t know what it was. I’ll try to work it out as I go along and maybe I’ll get there and maybe I won’t. Heck, I’ve been off for Christmas; I’m just easing myself back here.

Based on Vikas Swarup’s novel Q&A and adapted by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Starter for Ten) it’s set in Mumbai and is the story of Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a scarcely educated chai wallah (tea boy) from the slums who is one answer away from winning the top prize of 20 million rupees on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, the TV quiz show that is now playing in every country in the world and is probably playing in your pantry at this very moment. (Don’t believe me? Go check. Don’t have a pantry? Then go check the gun room. Don’t have a gun room? Check the stables. Don’t have stables? Seriously? Are you sure The Spectator is the magazine for you?)

Now, the dazzlingly insincere quiz show host (played wondrously by Anil Kapoor, quite my favourite person in the whole film) suspects Jamal of cheating, as do the police, who bring him in for a little light torturing — a bit of electrocution, nothing more — and interrogation.