Q & A (Slumdog Millionaire)

A kid from the slums wins a billion rupees on a game show. The game show's producers don't want to pay out so soon and thus they seek to dig up dirt on him to declare him a cheat. Luckily, an attorney shows up to take him out. He shares his entire story with her, and eventually gets his money. It turns out, he just happened to have life events that led him to know the answers to the questions.

It all seems like a pretty good story. The "life events" are even spun out well - he doesn't just happen to experience a key historical event, but it just happens that some aspect of his experience relates to the question. (He happens to live with a cricket nut, and thus knows the answers to the cricket questions.)

The catch, however, is that the events are just a little too "exceptional". He manages to work for espionage agents, movie stars, hit men, and others that seem a little too far fetched.

The story paints a bleak picture of life in the Indian slums. However, in spite of it, it shows optimism in the spate of adversity. (The "pessimistic" running away from seemingly bad events often ends up being positive in the long run.) Alas, the extremeness of the events and forced melodrama (A gun fight with the game show host?) distract from the story.