I read Q&A years ago and I haven't yet seen the movie, so I can't give a good comparison on that front. But I CAN say that Q&A was entertaining. I loved how the main character's life provided all the answers he needed for the gameshow. I didn't expect it to be literal, more a look at how we learn things even when we don't intend to.

I have read one book by Rushie (Midnight's Children) and it was completely far fetched and quite odd ... so I don't think he has any room to talk here.

I was thinking the same thing. I really enjoyed the movie and realized all along that it is a work of fiction.

I haven't read the book yet (I hope the library likes me this week...) but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I've also been made aware that the book and movie are quite different from one another, excepting the similar story.

Still, while I respect the right to express your own opinion, Rushdie's comments are kind of weird. Obviously a work of fiction is... what's the word... fictitious? Yeah, that's it. I most certainly agree with you on that count. Rushdie's complaints seem quite odd. I'll just read the book, enjoy the movie in its own rights, and carry on.

This is the kind of intemperate speech that gets Rushdie into trouble time and time again. He is a brilliant writer, but also has the unfortunate habit of directing his criticism against those least capable of handling it objectively. We are all for free speech, and the right to an opinion, but why must it be so destructive and malicious? Does he think taxpayers are continually obligated to pay for his security and protection, only to have him rashly provoke people who are easily agitated, and further imperil himself?

Rushdie is right on the money. See another similar opinion on www.theprogressive.org .

Rushdie is jealous that a foreigner has made a movie about his Mumbai and got it right. His criticisms make no sense. This is fiction and not a documentary.

What's the fuss? His comments seem quite tame. No different from anyone else discussing a movie they didn't care for.

Pointing out minor details that happened to bother him is hardly "lambasting".

No matter what you think of Rusdhie or his writing, he has a good point --"Slumdog Millionaire" should win the award for Dumbest Movie of the Decade.

I think Slumdog is worth the cost of admission just for the opening chase scene through Mumbai's slums. I'd put that up against any chase from Hollywood's past, including classics such as Bullitt and The French Connection.
p.s. For another gripping look at slums in Mumba and other parts of the world, check out http://www.theplaceswelive.com/

Rushdie's novel the Satanic Verses is also extremely implausible. It is one thing to upset Iranian fanatics but a whole another thing to upset the Bollywood fans.

For the first time in Bollywood history, an Indian Music director, AR Rahman won an Award and a movie based on Indian life. It gave face to India.

Rushdie plagiarized his works. Satanic Verses is actually a copy of the novel "The Master and Margarita."

Finally Rushdie has lost all credibility out of his own jealousy.

Rushdie has made some quite valid comments really. As a writer of quality fiction, he has the right, and some might say the responsibility to analyse and review his peers work, just as his peers have done with his work for many years. That's what happens in the literary world, books get reviewed, plots get disected, structure gets analysed, opinions get aired!
Should Rushdie be villified because he has the fortitude to express his more than qualified views? I think most of us still live in a democratic society where freedom of expression still exists.

I agree with Salman here. Slumdog Millionaire plot is overkill and implausible.

The toilet-autograph scene, the scene where the american couple hands over $100 bill to the boys who steal their car tyres and worst of it all a TV contestant being tortured by police who "suspect" him of cheating.

I'm having a hard time understanding how so many other people seem to like it.

Rushdie is blasting movies for being improbable? That doesn't make any sense. If you've read his work, it is highly unrealistic. The twists and turns of Midnight's Children are much less true to life than the slight improbabilities of Millionaire.

I didn't think too much of the movie but doesn't Rushdie have an obligation to be gracious. The more he does this the less people will care about what he says anymore...

I haven't seen the book or read the movie yet, but at my wife's suggestion I checked the Enoch Pratt and Baltimore County library systems: Both Pratt copies are out, and (by my count) 34 of the county library's 35 copies are checked out, on hold or in transit for hold. Something like the way Jane Austen interest spikes whenever they film one of her books, I guess. Well, that certainly puts Vikas Swarup, the author, in good company.

The complaint regarding how they end up at the Taj Mahal, 1,000 miles from the previous scene... Hmmm, I'm surprised Rushdie didn't complain how implausibly the boys aged as they tumbled from the train. (D'oh! the train! But, of course!)

salman rushdi must kill.....!!!!
"a muslim from iran"

When paid to pay out a picture it pays to pay attention. Where was Salman Rushie when the boys in Slumdog Millionaire were educated in English? Outside having a fag? Was he concentrating when the boys went back and forth across India, working the trains for years, before ending up in Agra?

Did he not observe how the brother got the gun?

Did he not perceive that the Indian cinema feel good dance ending was there to contrast against the enduring reality of poverty and exploitation of the weak?

When public intellectuals opine as if God Almighty they should be sure of their facts.

In The Guardian Mr Rushdie made insights into adaptations of books into films. Did he notice Slumdog Millionaire's possible lineage, Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, through several cliched westerns and gangster films, fused with Oliver Twist?

I don't understand why so much of what has been reported about the article seems to focus on Rushdie slamming the film for being "ridiculous" and "unrealistic." He does bring this up, but this is hardly his major grievance. I don't think the article is on the guardian website anymore, but here's an excerpt:

"It used to be the case that western movies about India were about blonde women arriving there to find, almost at once, a maharajah to fall in love with, the supply of such maharajahs being apparently endless and specially provided for English or American blondes; or they were about European women accusing non-maharajah Indians of rape, perhaps because they were so indignant at having being approached by a non-maharajah; or they were about dashing white men galloping about the colonies firing pistols and unsheathing sabres, to varying effect. Now that sort of exoticism has lost its appeal; people want, instead, enough grit and violence to convince themselves that what they are seeing is authentic; but it's still tourism. If the earlier films were raj tourism, maharajah-tourism, then we, today, have slum tourism instead. In an interview conducted at the Telluride film festival last autumn, Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

I think Rushdie's accusation of riduculousness pertains more to the lack of respect the film affords its subject matter. Granted the scenes shot with the slum children were very well acted and moving, but apparently this material is only interesting to western audiences if sandwiched between some absurd trashy plot about miraculous coincidences involving a popular tv show-presumably the children's plight in itself is nowhere near "entertaining" enough to sit through for two hours. When was the last time you heard this kind of wide scale media w*nking over a film by an indian director about child poverty or similar? Probably they weren't uplifting enough, or maybe "too ethnic." We only seem to like "ethnic"-interest things after they've been repackaged with a healthy dose of saccharin by a nice familar white director.....

And the acting in the present day scenes was terrible.