Very rarely, a movie based on a book is better than its inspiration. Slumdog Millionairebelongs to this rare category. I watched the flick sometime back andthen I got to read the book after it... trust me, the movie came out Ntimes better than the book (N>1).
For those, who don’t have a background, Danny Boyle picked an Indian book named Q&A by Vikas Swaroopand created a master-piece called ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. The movie and the book convey the idea how someone grown up in slums (or you can sayin the worst of conditions) won a huge amount in one of the quiz showsand became a suspect of cheating. Now he narrated about how he came to know the answers of the typical questions asked in the show in the course of his run to win the largest amount ever in a quiz show.
InQ&A, the protagonist named Ram Mohammad Thomas is alone in hisjourney of life. He met various people and events in his life throughwhich he came to know about the answers of each question asked on thequiz. The protagonist was abandoned and a priest from church found him.But the stories behind each question in the show don’t seem veryrealistic in the book. Also the book doesn’t create the curiosity...you can easily guess what will be the next question deriving from thestory and most of the time you find yourself correct.
In SlumdogMillionaire, they didn’t copy the book as it is... Took some question(3-4, which seem realistic)... And altered the story completely. Herethe guy is from the slums of Mumbai who lost his mother in somecommunal riots. He also has an elder brother who always has a commandover the protagonist. They also introduced a girl who is always in thecentre and the hero (salim here) always looks for her. Eventually, hemeets the events that enable him to answer the quiz questions. Thestoryline for both the book and the movie is less or more similar butthe movie creates curiosity.
Also in the book the purpose of theprotagonist of attending the quiz show was not only to catch up withbig bucks but also to take revenge from the host. The same didn’thappen in the movie. The book is more into relationships but the movieis more into only one relationship LOVE.
Both are good but ifyou have seen the movie, I don’t think that you will like the bookmuch. Though I met many contradictory posts, which claims the book tobe better, I personally felt that in the war between the two, SLUMDOGhas an edge over Q&A.