Indians don't feel good about 'Slumdog Millionaire'

Others, such as Shekhar Kapur, who directed "Elizabeth" (1998), argue that for all intents and purposes it's Indian. "What's most relevant is that 'Slumdog' is the most successful Indian film ever," he said. "It was directed by a British director and funded by a European company, but so what?. . . . Foreign crews are very common in Indian films now."

"Slumdog" cost $15 million to produce but has already earned more than $50 million in the U.S. and elsewhere. It saw its Indian premiere Thursday, in Mumbai, and began screening with the original soundtrack or completely in Hindi on Friday in 400 theaters in 81 cities.

At the star-studded premiere, Boyle responded to criticism here that the film focused too much on prostitution, crime and organized begging rackets, saying that he sought to depict the "breathtaking resilience" of Mumbai and the "joy of people despite their circumstances, that lust for life."

For some, the underdog theme is not so much irrelevant as passe. Rags-to-riches tales dominated Bollywood from the late 1950s through the early 1980s as India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty.

With the nation's rising standard of living and greater exposure to foreign culture, Bollywood has increasingly turned its attention to relationships and other middle-class concerns.

"Within the film world, there's a desire to move beyond the working class and lower sectors of society," said Tejaswini Ganti, an anthropologist and Bollywood expert at New York University.

The ambivalence some Indians feel toward the movie doesn't preclude it from becoming a roaring commercial success in India, experts said. "There is still a fascination with seeing how we are perceived by white Westerners," said Sengupta, the Mumbai film professor. "It's a kind of voyeurism."

Many in Bollywood also have transferred onto "Slumdog" their hopes for an "Indian" Oscar after homegrown favorite "Taare Zameen Par" failed to garner a nomination. "Taare," about a dyslexic child who finds an outlet through art, was the latest in a string of Oscar letdowns dating to 2002.

Between rolls of their eyes, critics here point to other foreign depictions over the years that they consider inaccurate, distorted or obsessed with poverty and squalor, including "Phantom India," "Salaam Bombay" and "City of Joy," in which a Western doctor played by Patrick Swayze arrives to save India.