One of the first negative reviews of Slumdog I read was from the blog The Great Bong, who absolutely lacerated it. In it, the blogger wrote, "Well yes these things do happen in India. However the problem is when you show every hellish thing possible all happening to the same person. Then it stretches reason and believability and just looks like you are packing in every negative thing that Westerners perceive about India for the sake of crowd pleasing."
He goes on to propose a film about an outlandish string of events happening to an African-American boy in the US, and says, "Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the 'American experience' and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie. At the very least, I wouldn't be on 94 percent on Tomatometer and a strong Oscar favourite."
"Say an Indian director travelled to New Orleans for a few months to film a movie about Jamal Martin, an impoverished African American who lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, who once had a promising basketball career, but who -- following a drive-by shooting -- now walks with a permanent limp, whose father is in jail for selling drugs, whose mother is addicted to crack cocaine, whose younger sister was killed by gang-violence, whose brother was arrested by corrupt cops, whose first born child has sickle cell anemia, and so on. The movie would be widely panned and laughed out of theatres."