Midnight's Children

With Rushdie having written the screenplay and being heavily involved, comments about faithfulness to the book are moot; also, the book is quite stylised and far too dense with detail to be easily converted.

So the biggest problems are thus:

* Technical atrocities

* Clichés layered on thick

* Terrible comedic timing

Firstly, the camera work is all over the shop. Hand-held DSLRs are wonderful bits of technology, but camera shake at certain moments of action is confusing, and a bit shoddy. It doesn't help the pace of the film, which changes at strange intervals.

Secondly, the compositions are banal. It's like they used iStockPhoto for storyboarding, and stuck every visual cliché about India into the shots.

Thirdly, there are moments in the film ripe for black comedy where there is none, and moments where comedy is just jarring. If you're going to mess with established concepts in the audiences' minds, it had better mean something. There is far too much throwaway material in the film.

And it's a long one, at 146 minutes, and could have been much shorter, with more energy, better pace, and of higher quality throughout. To the film's credit, there are production elements very well done; the use of children and animals, you'll be startled to hear, are handled brilliantly. But it's not really enough. It may be just that Salman Rushdie would have been better supervising the screenplay rather than writing it himself, and the film could use a complete re-edit, but it is what it is.

An adaptation of Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel of the same name, 'Midnight's Children' is a passable film. Go in with limited expectations & your chances of being disappointed will be less.

'Midnight's Children' Synopsis: A pair of children, born within moments of India gaining independence from Britain, grow up in the country that is nothing like their parent's generation.

'Midnight's Children' is an engaging story on paper, but on celluloid, it appears clichéd. India-Pakistan conflict, is beaten to death in cinema. Sure, the novel must've been captivating, but on-screen, it looks very regular. Deepa Mehta's Direction is terrific. She makes this otherwise passable film, watchable, due to her true talent as a storyteller.

Performance-Wise: Satya Bhabha delivers a sincere performance. Shriya Saran has 2 standard expressions. Siddharth tries hard to look like a menace. Darsheel Safary is very good. Seema Biswas & Ronit Roy are excellent, as ever. Others lend support.

On the whole, 'Midnight's Children' is watchable, at best.

Only occasionally does a movie portray a culture in a time and place that truly succeeds in giving you a sense of what it was like there. I think of Like Water for Chocolate for example. I was totally blown away by this film's ability to somehow transport me back to India, capturing all the craziness, the colours, the confusion, the sensibilities.... I only spent six weeks there but my son who worked there for a year and a half agreed with me. I think that it is a very unusual film for western viewers. The symbolism is so important and rich. We are not watching individuals at all but characters who represent elements of the country that the writer and director are passionate about. The pace and length is absolutely essential to get the feel of how vast the story is. The camera-work is breathtaking, the music is absolutely authentic, I felt that I could even smell India again. I noticed that the reviews by western critics were mostly negative while those from India were the opposite. If you want to enjoy this film, leave your western film expectations at home and come with an openness to a different way of seeing, learning and experiencing. I will encourage everyone I know to treat themselves to this wonderful film.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to watch an early screening of 'Midnight's Children' at the BFI London Film Festival. In the wake of several adaptations (Cloud Atlas, Silver linings playbook, Life of Pi) I wasn't really expecting much out of Midnoght's Children in particular.

When I first saw the trailer I wasn't thoroughly impressed. The acclaimed novel by Salman Rushdie is my favorite book of all time (Booker of Booker prize) and I had a hard time believing a film adaptation would come remotely close to the brilliance of the novel. I didn't want to watch the movie like a father that doesn't want to believe his son is doing drugs.

Thankfully, my son isn't doing drugs, and the movie isn't as bad as I expected. The cinematography is pretty good and the acting, which relied on Asian actors, is very good. I would have enjoyed a better soundtrack - sometimes the music felt eerily like b-quality Bollywood. There are also some scenes that could have been edited better - but I'm not in the movie business so what do I know? Big chunks of the novel are left out but I guess that's normal considering there always have to be some trimming here and there when transforming a novel into a film.

Overall great movie that doesn't disappoint fans of the novel. Sure, it could have been better - but hey, in this day and age, what couldn't be better?

Having read the novel a few years ago, went and watched it at the London Film Festival. As much as I wanted to love it, it didn't blow me away. The pluses: The acting was good with a good enough cast. Satya Bhabha, Rajat Kapoor, Shahana Goswami and some others (Seema Biswas, for example) were terrific. Shriya, Siddharth, Soha Ali Khan, the usual crowd that you see in many recent Hindi/Tamil films, did their best and I couldn't really find too much fault with them, though I've seen them play the same characters in other films. The story itself is quite powerful The locales were well chosen and you could sometimes feel the vibe of Partition. The minuses: The music (background score) was staid. The screenplay and adaptation to the medium seemed to be the crux of the problems, though. Deepa Mehta (and Rushdie himself) seemed to stick to the book too closely, and weren't very adventurous. At many times it was pure narration, which seems a bit lazy as an adaptation. The film was also 2.5 hours long meaning they left out nothing at the cost of making it a bit boring. Everything was so literal that they lost out on the magic of the writing. Still a normally good film it will typically be marked controversial even though it really isn't. I was just hoping for some distinctiveness and style.