Virginia Is For Families

Beth and I are seeing some of the movies nominated for Academy Awards as we do every year.  But this year I have not yet found anything worthy of great praise.   It’s disappointing but not unexpected.  How many great movies are there?   In the history of movie making are there one per year even?

Last night we went to see Slumdog Millionaire.  There is a place called the Westover Cinema near our neighborhood.  It’s one of these old theaters from a different world that somehow managed to survive by showing films normally not shown by the movie plexes.  Just one room with a screen and an old guy whose social security isn’t doing it for him collecting tickets. I don’t mean to be cynical but after watching this film cynical is perhaps a positive outcome.

Just imagine the neighborhood children living in the town dump without adult supervision.  Isn’t that a great way to spend a Saturday evening?  And that is really the least of it as this horrible film takes us from a stinking trash heap  to far  greater  depths of human suffering  as adults use these children for their own ends.

But it’s all about an orphan becoming a millionaire!  Whoopee!  Doesn’t that make it alright?  Apparently so because just about everyone clapped when it was over.  Except  for your blogging buddy who was heading for the door.  I wouldn’t have stayed that long except for the fact that it was Valentine’s Day and I was out on a date with the beautiful Beth.

This is an awful movie.   Do yourself a favor and pass on it.

There is a love story grafted onto it.   But there never is any dialogue between the two would be lovers that would indicate why they are attracted to each other.  They went through a nightmare together and I guess that’s a good enough reason to fall in love.  It’s all very superficial except for the depiction of poverty.

So it should be a documentary.  And please don’t call it entertainment.  Show it to college students like my son who want to join the Peace Corps.   It would serve a useful purpose there.

When the director gets up on stage to collect his award (if he does) he should be greatly ashamed.  Using children and poverty to gather wealth and fame is no great achievement.   There are great rags to riches stories out there but they are works of art.   This is a formula brought to life on some trash heap somewhere and fed to a naive public.

And none of the children it is about will ever see it.

NY Times Review

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/movies/12slum.html