Anyone notice they don't kiss?

Bet that's not the reason. Remember the kissing scenes between Kal Penn and Jacinda Barett in The Namesake? Same guy, other girl, Harold and Kumar.

so i don't think that is the case

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Come on, in India they don't like to show dark skinned Indians (and Patel is a reasonably dark skinned Indian "Brit") smooching lighter skinned Indian birds. We all know India is obsessed with skin colour, so don't act like it's just the "evil racist" westerners.

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I thought Mara was wasted here. She was just the female romance interest, to give the film some sense of normalcy about Saroo. It at least makes him "straight".

Mara's role was underwritten and she was a bland presence here, offering phony support. She wasn't even needed. I also thought the film spent too much time lingering on adult Saroo's desperate search to locate his village on google earth, when it would have so much more interesting, spending Mara's time and some of the google earth time, on watching him growing up and adjusting to Australian life when he was younger. I also wasn't that fond of the score either.

Flaws aside, the film was visually strong and involving—the first hour especially in India—and did make quite an emotional impact, in a manner which I haven't experienced like this from a film in quite some time.

Having viewed Lion twice, I would say that all your points are essentially correct. The emotional impact was very strong for me the first time that I viewed the film. It was not as bluntly strong the second time—just because I had already been acclimated to it and there were no more surprises—but I gained a greater feel for the film's nuanced strengths and emotional depth.

The scenes in India are excellent—really all of the scenes in India, but especially the first portion of the movie before Saroo goes to Australia. Director Garth Davis beautifully and sharply balances mise-en-scene and montage, relaying the emotions and instincts of the young boy without strain or the condescension that one might expect in this scenario. Matters feel entirely 'captured' rather than contrived, as Davis creates extremely naturalistic, phenomenological scenes and sequences that are even reminiscent of the great Indian director Satyajit Ray. Although some of the sequences border on dystopian, Davis effectively captures the terror of a young child in that situation.

The scenes in Australia are much less remarkable, although Davis maintains a sense of intimacy and visual balance that keeps the film quietly mesmerizing. Not until the introduction of the girlfriend (Mara Rooney) does the movie significantly weaken or start to 'coast' in places, although even then, the scenes are adequate. Still, they are also trite and serve the conventional purpose of establishing heterosexual romance for its own sake. I agree that spending more time on Saroo's childhood growth and how he carried his memories over time would have been ideal—and would have made for an easier payoff later on. After all, as you indicated, the film lingers excessively on the Google Earth searches in an attempt to convey the emotional resonance of this process. Here Lion is on much weaker ground than in those Indian scenes, where Davis had achieved emotional resonance in very simple, naturalistic manners. In a sense, in the girlfriend and Google Earth sequences, one can feel the film 'feeling' its way through matters rather than just 'being,' which was its early strength (even if one early montage, in the empty moving train, may have been a hair too stylized at one point). By showing more of his adjustments to life in Australia, and the journey of that transition, the movie would have created more emotional resources to tap into later on, rather than trying to create those resources in flimsier passages involving the girlfriend and Google Earth. But I sense that the decision not to show more of that childhood journey proved practical as much as anything—given Sunny Pawar's age, one could only bring him so far into the future. In other words, the filmmakers may have needed a third actor to play Saroo, forming a bridge between Pawar and Dev Patel, and that additional casting could have become complicated. It could have worked, but it also could have been messy. Either way, Lion recovers its simplicity and naturalism when it returns to India to conclude the movie.

In addition to the trite nature of the romance and the excessive lingering on Google Earth, Lion's other significant flaw is indeed the recurring classical piano theme in the score. The music is not bad—actually, in the abstract, it is good and conventionally beautiful, hence the Golden Globe nomination in this category (for what that is worth)—but it is just too 'pat' for a film which, at its best, derives its strength from being raw and the opposite of 'pat.' The theme is hackneyed, sounding like it came from any number of Weinstein Company movies or as if it is imitating Alexandre Desplat's scores. Conversely, the film did better with its primary credits song at the end, which blended Western pop and classical Indian music. Using classical Indian music as part of the score proper, as The Man Who Knew Infinity (another Dev Patel vehicle) did, would have constituted an improvement for Lion.

Still, Lion is engrossing and balanced, and at its best, it draws great emotional power and depth in simple ways. Pawar is phenomenal, although Patel is just adequate. (When there is a major male role for someone of Indian descent, is there not another actor that these movies can use?) But Nicole Kidman is nuanced, even if her best scene falls into the proverbial "Oscar bait" category. And although her role is perfunctory and unmemorable, Rooney makes the most of it. I would describe Lion as "very good"—not quite Best Picture-worthy, but one of the year's five-to-ten best films. Saroo's memories of, and longing for, Guddu, prove especially haunting.

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