The film tries to get away with this by suggesting that Jamal's getting these questions and reaching the last one on the show happened because "it is written." However, in a life and a world where Jamal makes his own way, to suggest divine intervention to have him win money is a difficult concept to swallow. It may have been harder for Simon Beaufoy – who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay here – to write a tale that would hold together jumping around more in time, but it would have added something of value as well.
While Slumdog Millionaire tells a great a story, and is most certainly a wonderful and wonderfully engrossing film, it is clearly just that, a film. But, what's more, no matter how much it depicts Indians, it is a film made by and for westerners.
To hear Beaufoy and Boyle discuss the making of the film in some of the extras included on the DVD makes one occasionally cringe. While the two clearly have a certain amount of reverence for India and Indians, they from time to time toss off statements that sound condescending and/or offensive (depending on one's point of view). I do not for a single minute believe that their intent was anything less than honorable and honorific, but it doesn't always come out that way.
Beyond that, there are several other instances in the film that exist solely for western audiences. The fantastic and incredibly memorable scene in which young Jamal jumps into feces in order to get out of an outhouse so that he can get Amitabh Bachchan's signature stands out as one of them. The first question Jamal gets on the show is who starred in the 1973 film Zanjeer. As Jamal eventually points out to the inspector, everyone in India knows Amitabh Bachchan, but it takes an awful long time to get there, to explain the reverence for Bachchan (arguably the biggest star in Bollywood to this very day). And, more importantly, the film makes no acknowledgment that it was Bachchan who hosted Who Wants to be a Millionaire when it first came to India. Surely Jamal would have mentioned that in his discussions with the police. Omissions like these, and other oddities in the film, like showing something that looks far more like bhel poori on screen when pani poori is discussed, only further serve to hurt the film's authenticity. Again, do not mistake what I'm trying to say – the film is a wonderful fairytale and a great love story; there are, however, moments of concern.
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