THE ARCHIES
Since I had watched musicals like ‘The Sound of Music’, ‘My Fair Lady’ or ‘Mary Poppins’, or read Tinkle comics or books by R.L Stine, I always wondered how I would feel watching an Indian movie made in the pattern. Not that India hasn’t had musicals since the beginning of time, but it has been a while for films to break into situational music now and again and songs that take the story forward in a beautifully laid down ‘logical’ fantasy.
Zoya Akhtar’s ‘The Archies’, now streaming on Netflix, is this freshly baked adaptation of the popular comic book from the 1940s Archie’. The basic concept revolves around the adventures of the main character Archibald Andrews and his friends Reggie, Veronica, Betty, Jughead and others in Riverdale.
In this recent film, Akhtar works her magic by fitting into a sensible and convincing reason for the existence of these characters and the setting in India. Everything stays imaginative throughout, yet the people there exist as ‘Anglo-Indians’, with their captivating culture, language continually lapsing from Hindi to English now and again, and their wardrobes full of skirts and Pinafores and suits, going back to the 1960s.
After taking out all the surrounding elements and leaving the story, it's quite simple, straightforward, and predictable (But the predictability feels planned as if the makers know it is that way and wish to sustain the same happily). Like every comic book or moral story, we can predict the outcome, yet something glues us to read the entire thing. All the people are good, and others are villains, but it doesn’t feel very goody-two-shoes. The dialogues are creative at some point, then soapy and straight-out Instagram memes. It is beautiful to watch characters breaking out into songs now and again, whether it’s a happy, sad or confusing circumstance, and it's controlled to a fair extent. Some of the acting goes on and off and dragged, but it works pretty well in other scenes. Even though the story is predictable, loose ends like Archie’s love triangle with Betty and Veronica, Dilton’s secret, and the conflict between Reggie and his father have been handled exceptionally well.
However, Mr Lodge’s sudden change of heart looks pretty unconvincing. Some points during the climax sequences seem to go with too much ease. It’s a chance to watch the conflict introduced almost immediately after the first song. The film wants to get straight to the point, and it does, but that conflict between them feels a bit ‘put aside’. We don’t miss the conflict not coming up again and again as we are enjoying the other positive bits of the story, but when we go back and think about it, this balance seems off, and towards the end, the resolution feels as if it's going with this ‘ease’.
I hadn’t been into anything regarding Archie before I saw this film, but ‘The Archies’ sowed in expectations of being together in a group ‘anywhere and everywhere’ like ‘How I Met Your Mother’ or ‘The Big Bang Theory’. They are introduced together but aren’t as a clan until they decide to take action against Green Park and around that. It is not even like they are enemies at first and are friends later. They are together and separate on and off, which seems uneven.
Watchers around us find it pretty striking to watch a creation like this. The songs coming now and again, or the dancing styles too, instead, a very different production design and the way this dainty little world is created, is too new for every film that is made in the nation-state. And even though things here and there wouldn’t sink in, a revolution of such creation process ought to be taken with open arms, and it is her- The Zoya Akhtar, a person who tackles something distinct for all that matters.
