Zoya Akhtar hardly gets it wrong. She's Bollywood's lady cool, a laid-back, artistic enfant terrible whose next project's subject always is anyone's guess. So, when the Gully Boy (2019) filmmaker decided to take on a comic book series that we can all agree to call long outmoded, for her new film, it makes for a subversively delicious proposition.
The Archies opens with the protagonist taking a group of tourists around Green Park, the beloved sprawling green lung of Riverdale, which is refashioned as a pretty hill station somewhere in India with quaint bookshops run by Shakespeare-quoting Parsi gentlemen and cosy salons with kind aunties at the helm. The central conflict is 'public interest versus corporate interest', as Dilton Doiley (Yuvraj Menda) declares in the classroom. Veronica's (Suhana Khan) obscenely wealthy parents are back from London and want to tear the town down for their own interests. The teenagers are about to get wind of the devious capitalist plan and embark on a campaign to protect Green Park and Riverdale's old ways. But before that, it indulges in the quintessential Archie's tropes — the love triangle is preserved, as are Jughead's awkward, gluttonous ways, Reggie's irresistible vanity and Veronica's foxy charm.
The narrative sticks to the original names, eschewing the occasional tradition of adapting it into Hindi. Akhtar, who has spoken at length about her fondness and nostalgia for the comics, absorbs the naïvete of its world with a wilful self-awareness, proclaiming — nay, crooning — to the world that she is taking a break from the gritty worlds and stark realism of her previous features.