Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
86
(36 sources)
86
(36 sources)
-
100
New York Post
Four stars simply aren't enough for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which just may be the most entertaining movie I've ever labeled a masterpiece in these pages. Read Full Review » -
100
Chicago Sun-Times
This is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same time. Read Full Review » -
100
USA Today
Director Danny Boyle's riveting and kaleidoscopic tale, based on Vikas Swarup's debut novel "Q and A," is exquisitely adapted to the screen by Simon Beaufoy. Read Full Review » -
100
Wall Street Journal
Slumdog Millionaire is the film world's first globalized masterpiece. Read Full Review » -
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The story may stretch credibility until it's ready to pop its seams, but Patel conveys the simple confidence of a prodigy who has learned everything important in life, except how to lie. Read Full Review » -
100
Philadelphia Inquirer
It doesn't happen often, but when it does, look out: a movie that rocks and rolls, that transports, startles, delights, shocks, seduces. A movie that is, quite simply, great. Read Full Review » -
100
Boston Globe
You may even feel like dancing in the aisles yourself. Sure, the real world doesn't always work this way. Have you forgotten that this is one of the reasons why we go to movies in the first place? Read Full Review » -
100
Baltimore Sun
Slumdog Millionaire dives headfirst into something greater than a subculture - the enormous unchronicled culture of India's mega-slums - and achieves even more sweeping impact. Read Full Review » -
100
Miami Herald
A terrific yarn, one so engrossing and surprising that the nature of the story's structure -- each question Jamal gets asked on the show corresponds with a traumatic or momentous moment from his childhood -- never feels like a contrived framing device. Read Full Review » -
100
Empire
Danny Boyle's finest since "Trainspotting." In fact, it's the best British/Indian gameshow-based romance of the millennium. Read Full Review » -
96
NPR
Romantic, action-packed and always held together by an intriguing social conscience, Slumdog Millionaire is a rapturous crowd pleaser. Read Full Review » -
91
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Slumdog Millionaire features the simplest story Boyle has ever told, which may explain why its many pleasures are so pure. Read Full Review » -
91
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
This is Boyle's fullest, most satisfying work and an audience-pleaser that deserves to be a big hit. Read Full Review » -
90
Washington Post
Like all good fairy tales, this outsize celebration of perseverance and moral triumph contains within it a deeper idea -- in this case, the relative nature of what we think we know, and what's worth knowing at all. No doubt Dickens himself would approve. Read Full Review » -
90
-
90
Los Angeles Times
Boyle has been nothing if not bold with this film. He's dared to use so many venerable movie elements it's dizzying, dared us to say we won't be moved or involved, dared us to say we're too hip to fall for tricks that are older than we are. Read Full Review » -
90
Variety
Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast. Read Full Review » -
90
Village Voice
An almost ridiculously ebullient Bollywood-meets-Hollywood concoction--and one of the rare "feel-good" movies that actually makes you feel good, as opposed to merely jerked around. Read Full Review » -
89
Austin Chronicle
Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant. Read Full Review » -
88
TV Guide
A great movie is something more than the sum total of all its parts, and here, the elements all come together to form a feature that speaks a universal form of optimism that isn't likely to get lost in translation, no matter where it screens, or who is watching. Read Full Review » -
88
Rolling Stone
Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things. Read Full Review » -
88
ReelViews
The result is magical and life affirming, and will enrapture those who are not scared away by the mention of "subtitles." Read Full Review » -
83
Portland Oregonian
Boyle, one of the premier stylists in the world fills "Slumdog" with ebullient energy and ceaseless invention. Read Full Review » -
80
-
80
Film Threat
Absolutely perfect family entertainment for anyone over the age of ten. It is a celebration of not just the usual triumph of the human spirit, but a celebration of the human experience. Read Full Review » -
80
Time
Despite its elements of brutality, this is a buoyant hymn to life, and a movie to celebrate. Read Full Review » -
80
Salon.com
The real star of the film is not a person but a city, the vertiginous, exciting, massively overcrowded "maximum city" of Mumbai. On one hand, this environment of Dickensian, almost hallucinatory contrasts between rich and poor, good and evil feels perfect for Danny Boyle. Read Full Review » -
80
Slate
A stylish, ingeniously constructed bit of hokum, a sparkling trinket of a movie that's as implausible as it is irresistible. Read Full Review » -
75
Chicago Tribune
After last year's black-hearted "No Country for Old Men," the Oscars may well be in the mood to embrace a fairy tale sampling every imaginable genre, with a note of triumph accompanying even the worst suffering, capped by the snazziest ending money can buy. Read Full Review » -
75
Entertainment Weekly
Slumdog Millionaire is nothing if not an enjoyably far-fetched piece of rags-to-riches wish fulfillment. Read Full Review » -
70
The New York Times
In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale). Read Full Review » -
70
The Hollywood Reporter
What's perhaps most fascinating about the film is Boyle's relentless focus on the realities of present-day India as a vehicle for his spectacle and laughs. Read Full Review » -
70
The New Yorker
What IS surprising is the unembarrassed energy that Boyle devotes to his pursuit of the obvious; there's nothing wrong with the formulaic, it would appear, so long as you bring the formula to the boil. Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
The movie brushes against some of India's worst social ills, but it's essentially a fairy tale. Read Full Review » -
67
Christian Science Monitor
The entire film has the glibness of a music video. Boyle has managed to make dire poverty seem glossy. Read Full Review » -
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Doesn't hit its stride until the last 30 minutes, and by then, it's just a little too late. Read Full Review »
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