Once you see it, it’s easy to understand the appeal of Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a fable, and aside from being Indian it’s like something out of Dickens. A kind of amalgamation of Oliver Twist and Great Expectations; as if Oliver grew up to be Pip if that makes any sense to you. But what’s for sure is that this film is the most I’ve ever been engrossed by an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire; a show that even when it was at its height, during the Philbin-era, I jokingly referred to as “Jeopardy for Dummies.”

In the hands of the enigmatic and ever so eclectic Danny Boyle though, Millionaire becomes a cauldron of suspense; the lynchpin for all of one young man’s hopes and dreams. We meet Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) as he’s being interrogated by police, and I do mean interrogated. The question before him is how can this poor kid, this Slumdog, possibly score as high he has on a game show testing, ahem, knowledge? How does he know all the answers? The only response the police have is that he must be cheating. But through flashbacks we see that Jamal’s life on the streets of Mumbai with his older brother Salim laid out all he ever needed to know to win Millionaire, all in perfect fairy tale fashion.

The narrative bounces around from tracing Jamal and Salim’s vagabond childhood following the death of their mother, to Jamal’s showdown on the show, to his questioning by police, yet somehow it all makes sense as you see it unfold. At first you think that Jamal is out to win the 20 million rupees in an attempt to buy himself into a life far and beyond that of a tea servant at a call centre. But in reality, he’s hoping his appearance on the show will attract the attention of Latika (Freida Pinto) the woman he loves, but is constantly being taken away from in some form or another. Millionaire, the Hindi version anyway, being the most popular show in India, she’s bound to see him.

But truthfully, it’s not about the money. In fact, the game is rather romantic, a hero’s quest of sorts. Like the knight that has to slay a dragon to get the princess, Jamal must avoid the getting caught up in the psych-out B.S. of the smarmy, somehow-more-annoying-than-Regis Hindi host (Anil Kapoor). Patel is great as Jamal and plays the beaten down street mouse assuredly with a great deal of reservation and hopeful, maybe naïve, romanticism. The two younger actors playing Jamal, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar and Tanay Chheda are good too and all three actors fit well together making a believable evolution of one to the other.

And what works beautifully in Slumdog Millionaire is the pageantry of emotion. Despite life in the slums, always living on the edge of poverty and grifting what they can, young Salim and Jamal the picture of boys living fun and free, even once to the tune of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.” But there is a dark side too. The way the boy’s mother dies in an anti-Muslim raid on their home slum, or Salim’s selling out to a local gangster, signing up for a life of crime as a mob enforcer and further alienating the brothers from each other. And what a bitter alienation it is too. To see the fraternity and camaraderie of Salim and Jamal turn utterly bitter is a difficult thing to watch indeed, although the signs leading up to it points to some bad stuff going down.

But back to the Millionaire game, which again seems like the most ridiculous thing to get caught up over, but as we learn more about Jamal and his journey, the more invest you become in seeing him get those 20 million rupees. I know I was on the edge of my seat as the film reached its ultimate response as the essential question of his young life turns into the answer he needs to take it all. Boyle should be commended for weaving such a film that can turn what has to be one of the lamest game shows in the history of the genre into an endurance test for the characters and the audience. The elation you feel in the end is surprisingly joyous and despite its dark materials, Slumdog Millionaire leaves you with the profound sense, as in many fairy tales, that dreams do come true.