A seamless treat—as swirling, vibrant, and ecstatic an entertainment as the movies are likely to produce this year, Slumdog Millionaire may well be contrived, a confection, but its construction defies artificiality; and what’s more, the film has the further audacity to explore and exploit such an idea. Director Danny Boyle, in great whirling control of a talent long confined to psychological thrillers (Sunshine, 28 Days Later) taps right back into the vein of propulsive zest that ran through his debut, Trainspotting, and his latest work—alternately a fusion of cultures, genres, and cinematic devices—practically jumps to life for it.

There is a coldness somewhere in the manipulation proposed and propagated as the film progresses—a certain need to balk at being asked to produce so many stock emotions at just such stock junctures in the narrative (a mother’s murder, a lover’s dislocation). Regardless, a surface happiness, a glow, subsists throughout. In part due to the pitch-perfect behind-the-camera work (from the aforementioned Boyle, paired nicely with writer Simon Beaufoy, who adapts the novel Q&A into a effortless interweaving of flash-backs and ruminations on things past, to composer A.R. Rahman, who provides the film’s kinetic soundtrack), and also with thanks to the actors (all of whom, through three different ages, and cast in a tricky triangle pattern, give grit to the fairytale), Slumdog Millionaire is triumphant on several levels. And if I love it just a little less than all those who surround me, it’s not without a little trepidation: by credits end, the film gets so good at whipping you into a frenzy of feelings, the lack of true sublimity warrants a slight pause.

Regardless, Dev Patel, as the titular Indian orphan competing on the much-tarter version of what we all watched back here with Regis Philban, is magnetically charming—he acts without appearing to do so; seconds in and the seams of his performance (the accent, the rather-large spectrum of Big Emotions) disappear—Poof! All that remains is a star. One more swirl of color, light, and storytelling delight, and the film itself vanishes—Poof!

All that’s left is joy.