FOUR stars simply aren’t enough for Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” which just may be the most entertaining movie I’ve ever labeled a masterpiece in these pages.

Great movies transport the audience, and this one left me floating on air after two viewings. I can’t wait to see it again – and share it with others.

It’s actually one of those movies that are best approached with as little advance knowledge as possible.

If you need more of a sell than that, let me just say it’s a soaringly romantic, uproarious comedy-drama with Dickensian overtones – set mostly in a vividly rendered Mumbai, India.

A police inspector (the excellent Irfan Khan) describes the story, which is taken from a novel inspired by a perhaps apocryphal story, as “bizarrely plausible.” That’s about right.

Jamal (Dev Patel), an 18-year-old Muslim, is a highly successful contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.”

He has qualified to answer a question that could bring him 20 million rupees (about $460,000), but the show’s unctuous host (Indian superstar Anil Kapoor) is jealous of his popularity and deeply skeptical of Jamal’s knowledge.

How can Jamal, an orphan from Mumbai’s slums who works as a tea server at the phone company, possibly know the answers to questions that stump learned professionals?

So he turns Jamal over to the cops, and they begin torturing our hero to confess that he’s somehow cheating.

In the brilliantly structured screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (“The Full Monty”), this summons forth a remarkable series of memories from Jamal, going all the way back to his childhood when his mother is killed in a religious riot.

Each story illustrates how Jamal is able to answer the questions.

We follow Jamal and his older brother Salim – well played by three sets of actors at various ages – through a series of incredibly colorful adventures, all of which adds to Jamal’s store of knowledge.

It begins with a dive into a latrine pit to steal a glimpse of a movie star and continues with their stealing shoes at the Taj Mahal as the brothers fall in and out with various band of criminals and each other.

The driving thread is the beautiful Latika (played as an adult by Freida Pinto), with whom Jamal becomes smitten as a child. He pursues her tirelessly even after she has been sold off to become the bride of a gang boss.

Boyle (“Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later”) and Beaufoy don’t take a single wrong step as the story hurtles toward a hugely satisfying climax.

American audiences have long been notoriously cool to the

larger-than-life storytelling style of Bollywood that Boyle pays tribute to, but “Slumdog Millionaire” could be an even bigger game changer than “Moulin Rouge.”

With a gallery of unforgettable performances and indelible images of the subcontinent, this is surely one of the year’s best movies – and the only live-action contender for the Best Picture Oscar released so far this year.

And by the way, don’t be afraid to take kids as young as 10. Yes, it’s got some subtitles – about half the film is in English – and yes, that R rating is justified by some violence and intense imagery.

But few movies ever have provided better and more entertaining lessons about the joys of learning. Plus, they’ll really enjoy it. Honest.

lou.lumenick@nypost.com