[11] Regarded as a sleeper hit, Slumdog Millionaire was widely acclaimed, praised for its plot, soundtrack, cinematography, editing, direction, and performances (especially Patel's).

[12] In 1992, five-year-old Jamal Malik, a resident of the Juhu slum of Mumbai, obtains the autograph of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan after jumping into a cesspit.

For the next years, Salim and Jamal travel on top of trains, making a living by selling goods, pickpocketing, washing dishes, and pretending to be tour guides at the Taj Mahal.

In 2004, Jamal, now working as a chaiwala in a call centre, learns that Salim is a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed's crime organisation.

Jamal loses contact with Latika and in a final attempt to reach her, he becomes a contestant on Kaun Banega Crorepati, knowing that she watches the show.

Feeling guilty about his past behaviour, Salim gives Latika his phone and car keys, asking her to forgive him.

Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup.

[18] To hone the script, Beaufoy made three research trips to India and interviewed street children, finding himself impressed with their attitudes.

[14] Then Boyle learned that the screenwriter was Beaufoy, who had written The Full Monty (1997), one of the director's favourite British films, and decided to revisit the script.

[20] Boyle was impressed by how Beaufoy wove the multiple storylines from Swarup's book into one narrative, and the director decided to commit to the project.

[22] Filming locations included shooting in Mumbai's megaslum and in shantytown parts of Juhu, so film-makers controlled the crowds by befriending onlookers.

[i] Deewaar (1975), which Boyle described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema", is a crime film written by Salim-Javed based on the Bombay gangster Haji Mastan, portrayed by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, whose autograph Jamal seeks at the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire.

[26] Satya (1998), written by Saurabh Shukla (who plays Constable Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire), and Company (2002), based on the D-Company, both offered "slick, often mesmerising portrayals of the Mumbai underworld" and displayed realistic "brutality and urban violence."

[30] The producer's first choice for the role of Prem Kumar was Shahrukh Khan,[32] an established Bollywood star and host of the 2007 series of Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?).

However, Khan turned down the role, concerned that he did not want to give his audience the impression that the real show was a fraud by playing a fraudulent host in the movie.

On Radio Sargam, film critic Goher Iqbal Punn termed the soundtrack Rahman's "magnum opus" which will acquaint "the entire world" with his artistry.

[43] Slumdog Millionaire was first shown at the Telluride Film Festival on 30 August 2008, where it was positively received, generating "strong buzz".

This record-breaking "ticket surge" in the second weekend came after Slumdog Millionaire won four Golden Globes and received eleven BAFTA nominations.

[citation needed] The film's success at the Academy Awards led to it seeing large increases in takings in the Asia-Pacific region.

[77] At the same time, Taare Zameen Par (Like Stars on Earth), India's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, failed to make the short list of nominations and was frequently compared with Slumdog Millionaire in the Indian media.

[85] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, calling it "a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating.

"[86] Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern refers to Slumdog Millionaire as, "the film world's first globalised masterpiece.

"[87] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post argues that, "this modern-day 'rags-to-rajah' fable won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year, and it's easy to see why.

"[88] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the film as "a Hollywood-style romantic melodrama that delivers major studio satisfactions in an ultra-modern way" and "a story of star-crossed romance that the original Warner brothers would have embraced, shamelessly pulling out stops that you wouldn't think anyone would have the nerve to attempt any more.

Boyle and his team, headed by the director of photography, Anthony Dod Mantle, clearly believe that a city like Mumbai, with its shifting skyline and a population of more than fifteen million, is as ripe for storytelling as Dickens's London [...] At the same time, the story they chose is sheer fantasy, not in its glancing details but in its emotional momentum.

"[90] Colm Andrew of the Manx Independent was also full of praise, saying the film "successfully mixes hard-hitting drama with uplifting action and the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire show is an ideal device to revolve events around".

"[95] Eric Hynes of IndieWire called it "bombastic", "a noisy, sub-Dickens update on the romantic tramp's tale" and "a goofy picaresque to rival Forrest Gump in its morality and romanticism.

The film is therefore likely to support policies that have tended to further dispossess the slum dwellers in terms of material goods, power and dignity.

[99][100] Ana Cristina Mendes (2010) places Boyle's film in the context of the aestheticising and showcasing of poverty in India for artistic (and commercial) purposes, and proceeds to examine "the modes of circulation of these representations in the field of cultural production, as well as their role in enhancing the processes of ever-increasing consumption of India-related images.

The film is seen by D. Parthasarathy (2009) as reflecting a larger context of global cultural flows, which implicates issues of labour, status, ascription-achievement, and poverty in urban India.