The Archies

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.

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