Lion (2016)

This was supposed to go up on Monday but I got distracted and then I blinked and it was Friday.  I don't know what happened.  Happy belated Thanksgiving, Americans!    I know this is based on a true story and it's very amazing that this guy managed to find his family from a handful of scattered memories, some math, and Google Earth, but this movie is really not worth the investment of your time.

Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is five-years-old when he accompanies his brother, Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), to a potential night job.  Being a small child, Saroo falls asleep on the platform while Guddu goes off to see about the arrangements.  Saroo wakes up, doesn't see his brother or anyone else, climbs aboard one of the trains, and falls back asleep.  What he doesn't know is that the train is decommissioned and is being returned to its home base in Calcutta, 1600 km (almost 1000 miles) from Saroo's hometown.  He is again a very small child from an illiterate, impoverished family who does not have ID, money, or even really any idea how to get back home.  Authorities are useless and Saroo eventually winds up in an orphanage where he is sold to a loving Tasmanian couple, Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John (David Wenham) Brierley.  Saroo (Dev Patel) grows up fully embracing his adopted nation and parents until a chance encounter at a college party reawakens all those old childhood memories.  He then spends the next four years trying to backtrace the train's route to his birthplace in an attempt to find the family that believed him lost for over two decades.

If you're really interested, I would suggest reading the dude's book instead of watching this boring adaptation.  Dev Patel is moody and emo, Nicole Kidman cries a lot, and Rooney Mara is... just kind of there? I guess. 

One of my other major problems with this film is how it presents Saroo as being totally insulated by his adopted privilege.  He spends four years dicking around on Google Earth but never manages to find time to take a single class on Hindi?  He has to rely on a random villager to translate for him when he finally locates his birth mother.  It would be one thing if he just impetuously hopped on the first plane to India as soon as he remembered his original family and then just spent however long riding the trains until he found the right one, but FOUR YEARS sitting in front of a laptop and he never considered that learning ANY of the local languages might be helpful?  Yes, India is the second largest English-speaking country in the world, behind the U.S., but there's no reason to assume that understanding is universal.  (This is also a pet peeve of mine for American tourists.  You don't have to be fluent but take the time and at least learn how to say a handful of common phrases.   You are a guest.  Be a gracious one.)