This movie had a LOT more nudity than Slumdog Millionaire but gets a PG-13 rating?

LOL! I guarantee you every 13 year old boy that saw this is absolutely obsessed with Evan Rachel Wood now. We're not just talkin' bumity, we're talkin' boobity as well.

I watched this because everyone kept telling me "Oh go see it! It has Beatles songs so if you like The Beatles you'll love it!" If I wanted to listen to Beatles songs I can listen to any one of them on my ipod sung by the actual Beatles and not a bunch of drama geeks trying to make them into some kind of soliloquy about how they are pathetic because no one wants to hold their hand so they run away to New York. What the crap was Prudence's story or point of even being in this movie at all by the way? Just so they could put in the blatant "she came in through the bathroom window" reference? That was another thing. Some of the dumb little references to Beatles songs were so lame. I expected a drum roll each time one was delivered. Although I wasn't completely against the characters being named after different songs, I was peeved that we didn't get to hear all their theme songs. We got to hear "Hey Jude" obviously and "Dear Prudence" when they were trying to coax little miss 60's self pitying emo brat out of the bathroom or closet or whatever it was. But no "Sexy Sadie", no "Get Back" (I totally expected Jojo to "get back" to Detroit at some point), no Maxwell's Silver Hammer (I was certain that he was gonna come back from Nam and go all serial killer, especially after the "Happiness is a Warm Gun" bit), no "Dr. Robert", can't think of any others currently. And what the freak was the deal with the whole Magical Mystery Tour out to the middle of nowhere where the Mr. Kite dude randomly shows up and gets everyone stoned and naked making out under water? That whole deal was about 30 minutes that the film could easily have done without. Let's see how well I remember the movie:

Girl/Helter Skelter: decent intro, nothing special
Hold Me Tight: I kinda liked the duality of the two main characters both singing the song but I can't stand that chicks synthesized voice. If you can't sing without a synthesizer you shouldn't be singing.
All My Lovin: just felt weird
I Want To Hold Your Hand: What the crap is this? Random girl singing as if she's going to cry like a baby about not holding someone's hand and then walking into the street.
I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends: I don't dance around like a ballerina with my dudes. These guys are flamers.
It Won't Be Long: fit well with the story, again don't like the synthesizer girl
Falling: The whole bowling alley dance-a-thon reminded me too much of Grease 2, I guess that may be what they were going for. This version doesn't even come close to the original though.
Let It Be: This was one of the few that I really liked. The gospel choir rendition was pretty good. I didn't quite understand the black kid singing and then being in the coffin. I guess he died in the riot? He was Jojo's motivation to run away to New York. Other than that don't know what his deal was.
Come Together: This was another well presented song. I liked the singer although I'll admit I'm not sure who it was. EDIT: Just looked it up and that is Joe Cocker. NO WONDER! He has already proved that he can own Beatle's songs. I mean be honest did you hear the Joe Cocker version of Get By With a Little Help first or the Beatle's version? If you're around my age and remember the Wonder Years then the answer will be Joe Cocker version. This is what happens when you get professionals to sing the songs instead of random wanna be singer/actors. That's why when The Who made Tommy they got Elton John and Tina Turner and Eric Clapton and other talented musicians to come be the actors and perform the songs. So that it wouldn't suck.
Why Don't We Do It In The Road: Sadie singing some of these songs made them weaker to me. Some were better but this was not one of those.
If I Fell: I really hated the way this song was presented. It makes it seem a lot more serious and sappy than I believe it was ever intended to be.
I Want You So Bad: Stupid. Yes that evil military is making all those innocent young men do terrible things. We should let everyone frolic in the flowers instead while terrorists massacre us. It especially bugged me that the uniforms that the military guys in this were wearing looked more like Nazi uniforms without a swastika symbol than an actual U.S. military uniform. And then the whole carrying the statue of liberty while singing She's So Heavy? Give me a break. Oh and I'm sure you really have to do your interview in your underwear. This was definitely made by lying hippies. Then finishing off with pathetic Prudence whining about not her pathetic existence again. At least her version kept the song in the correct context.
Dear Prudence: Love the song, hate this stupid character.
I Am Walrus: Sung by Bono. That is a plus. Still didn't really enjoy it as much as the original though.
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite: Well maybe if it had been sung I could critique the song. Why was this in the movie and who the hell is that weirdo they got to speak it.
Because: I love the original and this version wasn't bad at all. I really didn't get the random naked floating bums making out underwater though... I guess they all just got really high at the Dr. Robert party and everything from there until they get back to New York is a total blur.
Something: Meh. Not bad but not great.
Oh Darlin: The guitar player needed to not take the song lyrics personally LOL. Not a great version of this song. Mainly because he was sabotaging it though. So it was bad on purpose.
Strawberry Fields: I guess this was a tribute to John Lennon's war film? I seem to remember something about him writing this song for a war film he was in or something.
Revolution: Fit very well into the story. The ending was kind of weird with his singing as he was getting thrown out.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Original is MUCH better than this. Boring.
Across The Universe/Helter Skelter medley: Why didn't they have Bono sing Helter Skelter? And why is it always a part of another song in this film? And what was with the dancing monks on the other subway car? You don't have to be a monk to say Jai Guru Deva Ohm. I just said it and I'm a white christian.
Happiness Is A Warm Gun: I hated this version of the song. The only good part was the hot nurses. Still not understanding why having some crazy person have a seizure in the middle of a song is considered "dancing" to these people.
A Day In The Life (guitar solo): This actually worked really well. I liked it.
Blackbird: What did this have to do with anything? Producers: We gotta have Blackbird in there somewhere. Lets just randomly stick it in right here.
Hey Jude: Saw this one coming from about 600 miles away. I guess it had to be done. Seemed a little shorter than the original though. I guess that is a good thing.
Don't Let Me Down: I'm pretty sure they got the lyrics wrong on this. I don't really know how I feel about the whole rooftop concert thing either. You are not the Beatles and you don't even come close to comparing yourself with them. Maybe I'm too harsh, they had to end the movie someway I guess and this was as good as any.
All You Need Is Love: How special.

Rating out of 10 I give this movie a 3. It has some decent enough moments but as a movie it is extremely sporadic and hard to figure out the storyline at times and there are too many non-essential elements that make the movie a lot longer than it needed to be to tell the story. Musically, there are a couple good interpretations of Beatles songs but for the most part I prefer nonproxy music.

Message of this movie: When life gives you lemons, it takes them away from you before you can make lemonade and squeezes them into your gaping wound.

SPOILER ALERT!

The tag line on the poster you see here is a lie and false advertising. Lines divided them yes. But as I am about to tell you the ending of the movie so don't keep reading if you don't want to know!!! We see in the movie that hope didn't exactly unite anyone. In fact if anything united anyone it was despair. The story can be summed up with the following... So naive german kid meets concentration camp kid and decides he wants to go live with in the concentration camp because he sees a propaganda film saying they play sports and eat cake all day. So German kid goes in with Jewish kid and they get routinely ushered to the gas chamber and killed. The End. What a wonderful message of hope! (SARCASM AHEM!)

I'm usually a sucker for tragedies, but occasionally I see one that just rubs me the wrong way and instead of feeling reflective or inspired by the story I leave just peeved off that the director/writer/whatever dare write a story where something terrible happens to someone that doesn't deserve it. This is one of those. It doesn't make any point other than sometimes really terrible things happen and there's not much you can do about it. Well I don't go to see movies to learn that. I watch the news to learn that. A tragedy is supposed to make the audience see the mistakes of the tragic hero and say to themselves "man what a terrible thing, I will never make those mistakes myself". Either that or the hero sacrifices himself to save someone else. I mean don't get me wrong. I understand that this is a film about a concentration camp in the middle of the holocaust and it is going to be a sad movie. That is not what I am talking about. I'm talking about the fact that there isn't really any hero in the movie at all other than the naive little boy who gets himself killed because his parents and country lied to him about what was really going on in the camp. OK we already know that the Nazis were bad and should be ashamed of what they did. Do we really need a story that exploits that point? I don't know. Maybe I'm the one being naive. Maybe I'm wrong. But honestly at this point I will probably noy see this movie again and I will be telling certain people I know who don't even like the kinds of tragedies that I like to avoid this movie.

Absolutely loved it. That is my final answer.

I'm writing this review before I read all of the "I hated it so apparently I'm unique because I hate anything that's popular" threads, because everytime I read those first I end up defending the movie and feel like I'm writing a personal message to those people instead of just saying why I did or did not like the movie. So here goes.

I loved Slumdog Millionaire. I am still somewhat baffled over the R rating. First of all as far as language goes I don't remember one single use of the F word although apparently it was used like twice. Which still shouldn't make it rated R because I've seen quite a few PG-13 movies that have used the F word twice or more. I do remember a couple of times hearing the S word. But hey its a movie. Lots of movies have the S word. Nudity/Sex: well you see a little kids bum and there's a scene where it is implied that a young girl is coerced into sleeping with a young boy. Ok well, I see that on the news everytime a kiddie porn ring is busted. They didn't show anything. They just imply that it happened. Blood/Violence: there is some violence and some pretty intense scenes but there is literally no blood or gore. You see people get shot and hit in the head with a crowbar and have acid poured into their eyes but you don't actually see any of the gore. Intense yes. Take a child to see it no. But I do remember watching an episode or 60 of 24 where Jack Bauer more than implies that he killed some dude by biting his jugular vein. I mean come on. Point = TV shows are more intense than this. Drugs/Alcohol etc. again TV is worse or equal to what was seen in this movie. I mean couldn't they have just put a Parental Discretion is advised instead of slapping an R rating on there just because it was made by Danny Boyle?

Wow. Ok rating rant over. The movie is a very charming story about two young brothers living in the slums of India who lose their mother and are forced to fend for themselves. It is also a love story about one of the brother's quest to reunite with a girl they meet who also has no parents. The way the story is told is interesting. We get to see the main character Jamal on the Indian version of the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire answering all kinds of questions and at the same time he explaining how he knew the answers to the questions to a police chief who is trying to get him to confess to cheating. Each question leads to a flashback which is where the main story comes in. It is a very creative story and I thought very well crafted. While the actual elements are quite text book, (hero starts at home, goes on a quest, has adventures and whatnot, rescues the princess from the evil dragon, etc. whatever) but since when is that kind of a story not welcome? I like stories with happy endings. I don't think there is any hidden political agenda in the movie. I don't think Danny Boyle is naive or pompous or trying to talk down to anyone. I think he just wanted to tell an interesting engaging story about three very likeable characters who are trying to deal with life, but in a very different setting than a lot of people are used to. Its kind of like Oliver Twist meets Homer's Odyssey meets [insert love story here] in India. I knew what the 20 million rupee question was going to be from the second he gets whacked over the head with the book in the beginning by the way, but the predictability of the movie doesn't take away from its enjoyment because it doesn't try to present itself as a movie that trying to keep you guessing or surprise you with intricate plot twists.

Great there I go. I haven't even read the hater's posts yet and I'm still defending the show based on what I'm sure they are all saying. Well whatever. I give the movie a 10. It deserved Best Picture of 2008.