Hindi Movie Review: Kho Gaye Hum Kahan taps into the zeitgeist, but doesn’t offer much fresh perspective of its own
Desperate to convince you of its youthful energy but ultimately rather old-fashioned in its presentation, Arjun Varain Singh’s Kho Gaye Hum Kahan correctly identifies a lot of the sources of social unease in contemporary life without having anything vital to say about them. This is yet another “social media movie” that seeks to reflect how disconnected we all ironically are in this age of instant, accessible communication. It’s definitely a relatable topic that will broadly resonate, but do we really need another piece of media that simply reinforces the logical conclusion that the only way to escape the matrix is to put your phone down and look around?
This is an Indian film set in Mumbai, but there are very few story particulars that couldn’t be transposed onto any digitally connected nation in 2023, which is likely part of what made it an ideal candidate for worldwide distribution on Netflix. The other part, as with most OTT releases these days, is that it could just as easily pass for a miniseries as a film; it is written and directed with the slick indistinctiveness that has become the hallmark of today’s streaming “content.”
The story focuses on a group of three twentysomething friends contending with the societal pressures stemming from social media and digital identity. Imaad (played by Siddhant Chaturvedi) is an aspiring standup comedian who spends his off-nights serial-dating under a fake identity on Tinder, hooking up with dozens of women but never committing to a relationship. Imaad’s roommate, Ahana (played by Ananya Panday), has her own romantic troubles, desperate to make her “on a break” boyfriend Rohan (played by Rohan Gurbaxani) want her back by presenting a fictitious, thriving version of herself on an Instagram-like app. Meanwhile, Imaad’s longtime best friend, Neil (played by Adarsh Gourav), languishes over his “secret” tryst with a social influencer (Anya Singh), which she clearly has no intention of turning into a real, public-facing relationship.
Hindi Movie Review: Kadak Singh has its pleasures, but it’s at best a TV-caliber mystery
Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Kadak Singh plays so much like a paperback mystery, it’s a little hard for me to believe that the film comes from an original screenplay and is not, in fact, based on an obscure airport novel. It has many of the trimmings we’ve come to expect of knockoff Agatha Christie: a fortuitous case of retrograde amnesia, an apparent suicide attempt that may not have actually been a suicide attempt, a highly unlikely chance encounter between two parties that is extremely compromising for both, a “trust no one” style of storytelling, and so on and so forth.
As Kenneth Branagh has realized with greater acuity in each successive Christie adaptation he has made, most notably this year’s A Haunting in Connecticut, such hokum can make for a fun cinematic ride as long as it isn’t taken especially seriously. Chowdhury and the filmmaking team behind Kadak Singh didn’t necessarily get that memo, as they consistently try to sell the viewer on the credibility of each preposterous plot point. I don’t know about the average mystery B-movie viewer, but I’m personally more likely to cut the filmmakers slack in terms of plot holes when they dispense of them with a friendly wink.
Hindi Movie Review: The Archies is only ever “good enough” as an international adaptation
A part of me wants to approach The Archies with extreme cynicism. While the development of a Bollywood adaptation of Archie Comics apparently predated Netflix’s involvement in the project, it’s clear that the only reason this film has been born into the world, looking and feeling like it does, is the international success of Riverdale on the streaming platform. In other words, its very existence was the result of a commercial opportunity rather than an artistic imperative.
The product onscreen reflects this sense of opportunistic, rather than necessary, filmmaking. While Zoya Akhtar’s direction is handsome enough, it bears the distinct look and feel of a Netflix Original, with a fairly muted color palette and compositions tailormade for the TV and not the big screen. It barely feels like a “Bollywood” movie, either, beyond the fact that the characters (mostly) speak Hindi – and this isn’t even the default setting for consumers streaming outside of India, who will have to toggle to the film’s native tongue. This is to say, The Archies feels like a sleek, global two-and-a-half hours of “content” – it could have just as easily been cut into a miniseries as it was a movie – that happens to have been shot in Northern India.
The less cynical part of me would prefer to focus on the fact that The Archies is a mostly charming, easy-to-watch, family-friendly confection with several standouts in the young ensemble cast. It pays a good amount of deference to its American source material to satisfy those viewers with a vested interest in seeing the latest iteration of Archie, but it also doesn’t require any working familiarity with Archie Comics, Riverdale, or any of the other adaptations to be enjoyed. While there’s not a lot about the movie that’s genuinely invigorating or exciting, it’s also a perfectly pleasant piece of Saturday afternoon home viewing.
