Rahul Desai
At first glance, The Archies unfolds like a safe and superficial take on its famous source material. Stiff nostalgia and cosplay vibes seep through every frame. Zoya Akhtar’s film retains the low-stakes utopianism of the illustrated pages.
Even the setting feels customized to camouflage the body of a Bollywood launch vehicle. It’s an updated version of how a London-return background would be written into early Katrina Kaif characters.
Maybe the adaptation is so physically generic to offset the fact that every love triangle we’ve seen is already a spiritual descendent of the Archie-Betty-Veronica dynamic. So this is, in a way, the Ground Zero of personality tropes.
If you look past the shiny surface, though, The Archies is a self-reflexive critique of its own legacy. The story is infused with the sort of modern agency that challenges the space and time it stems from. It examines the Archie effect and ‘revises’ the blind spots of the comic book.
The definition of Average Life – and its inextricable link with the outside world – comes into focus. The tweaks are not subtle, but the context allows the film to sidestep the performative wokeness.
Like a dash of old-school patriotism: The shadow of post-independence pride hangs over the Andrews family, with Fred (Suhaas Ahuja) hoping that son Archie rethinks his desire to study abroad. Like the issue of free press and Like youth leading the way.