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I think Kelly and I might have been the last people we know to finally see Slumdog Millionaire, at the 9:50 showing Saturday night. While most of our friends, family and co-workers occupied packed theaters shortly after the film’s 2008 debut, we shared the rows of seats with just a handful of others.

Everyone we’ve discussed this film with, unwaveringly, raved about it. It was adorned with praise, we were warned that it was “heavy, but worth it”, and we were told that, “if you only go see one movie this year, Slumdog Millionaire should be the one.”

I’m still trying to figure out why… I wasn’t all that impressed with the film.

It’s not that Slumdog lacked a captivating plot – what rags to riches story ever does? It’s not that it was poorly shot – but the rave reviews of “vivid” cinematography were quickly forgotten in the face of alternatingly boring and whiplash-inducing visuals. It’s not that the cast did a poor job – quite the contrary, the acting was superb. But the total package only added up to the sum of its parts … and I expected a film that received this much acclaim, this much praise, this many awards to add up to more than that.

Of course, I had a backdrop of two truly excellent films against which to compare last night’s fare. Last week, Kelly and I rented a copy of Water, another Indian film that followed an 8-year-old girl through widowhood (yes, she was widowed at eight) in the 1930s. While bother Water and Slumdog Millionaire offered a look at things that human beings should never have to endure, something about the characters in Water – and the time the director took to develop them – left you with a much stronger feeling of closeness to them by the end of the movie. Their struggle became your struggle; it was more than just a story – you yearned for their eventual triumph … and didn’t always get your way.

A few days earlier, we watched The Kite Runner. If you’re one of the squeamish ones who thought Slumdog‘s violence and out-of-frame (or entirely out-of-scene) gore was “rough”, then I’d advise against watching The Kite Runner. Strongly. It has it’s disturbing parts – and when I say “disturbing”, I mean I shuddered at them, lying awake in bed, hours later – but the story that’s told is so profound and about such fundamental good that the film will inevitably scribe itself onto you.

By all means, don’t skip Slumdog Millionaire on my account. It’s certainly worth the eight bucks – but I’m just not quite in gear with everyone who’s saying it’s the hottest thing to hit a movie projector in decades.