A mediocre adaptation of Salman Rushdie's big novel. He also wrote the screenplay, and like Amis, blew it — even with some serious bowdlerizing there's still far too much going on in a lengthy two and a half hours. The winnowing makes it into the skeleton of an XMen movie. The characters are thinly drawn. The slum is amazingly clean. The cinematography has its moments. The magic is absent. Rushdie narrates, flatly. It was strange to hear Nehru voice his famous words.
Rachel Saltz at the New York Times at the time. She observes that they needed to go unabashedly large.