Toronto, Sept 08: Bollywood could not have got a more effective promotional `video` without having to ask for it.

Slumdog Millionaire, a film produced by Hollywood`s Fox Searchlight and directed and written by a famed British duo,
has delivered a glorious punch on behalf of the often-maligned
Bollywood song-and-dance set piece.

Director Danny Boyle`s film unspools a Bollywood number
on the end credits which turns out to be the film`s selling
point. With Gulzar`s lyrics and Sukhwinder Singh`s vocals, the robust AR Rahman-composed song, Jai Ho, has the young protagonists, British-Indian actor Dev Patel and first-timer
Freida Pinto, a chorus of dancers in tow, pulling off a rousing musical performance on a railway platform and atop a train.

More than half the audience at the film`s first press and industry screening at the ongoing 33rd Toronto International
Film Festival sat transfixed long after the credits had begun
to roll, which is usually a signal for people to jump to their
feet and head out of the hall.

Slumdog Millionaire, scripted by Simon Beaufoy of The Full Monty fame, is the story of a poor, uneducated boy who hits the jackpot on a game show, mixes elements of British realism and the conventions of a Bollywood love story.

Director of the Palm Springs International Film festival, Darryl McDonald, summed it up best: "Isn`t the Bollywood number absolutely outstanding?"

Bureau Report