Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Archies’ on Netflix, a Bollywood-Style Musical in Riverdale, Where Archie Gains Political Awareness

This week on “Yeah Sure Why Not?” Theater is The Archies (now on Netflix), a 141-minute Bollywood-via-Riverdale full-blown musical that takes no prisoners and gives no effs. Here, Archie, Betty, Veronica and co. are residents of an Anglo-Indian Riverdale in rural India where teenagers must set aside their kissyface interpersonal drama in order to rebel against The Man for a minute. The only thing these two parallel/intertwined plot lines have in common is, they’re both propelled along by elaborate song-and-dance numbers – or ground to a halt by elaborate song-and-dance numbers, an assertion that depends upon one’s tolerance for elaborate song-and-dance numbers. My tolerance is thin, but I kept an open mind as I hit play on this goofy, sorta-high-concept movie.

THE ARCHIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s 1964. Riverdale is the perfect mid-century small town in India where Western style and pop culture has infected it down to its bones. There’s rock ‘n’ roll, minidresses and nary a single mention of arranged marriage. At the center of the town is Green Park, a collection of trees, gazebos and grass that’s the hub of the community. Everyone loves Green Park, and we’re only one musical number into the movie when we learn that a rich shithead wants to bulldoze it and build a big hotel, part of a plan to corporatize Riverdale by buying up Main St. property and raising rents and “creating jobs,” because “creating jobs” is the obvious throughline to eternal happiness. Who needs a bunch of nature in the middle of a town anyway? What good is that doing anybody? It’s just a place for bugs and dirt to congregate, you know.

That rich shithead is the father of spoiled rich girl Veronica (Suhana Khan), part of a core group of high-schoolers destined to sing and dance their way through this plot, and maybe create and/or solve some problems. She’s besties with Betty (Khushi Kapoor) and they’re both trapped in a love triangle with Archie (Agastya Nanda), who fronts the band The Archies; when he’s not singing and strumming his electric guitar, he’s planning to go to college in London, and tongue-kissing pretty much any girl he meets, and being as unpolitical as possible. That’s the core of the group. Others in the clique include always-hungry punchline-clown Jughead (Mihir Ahuja), hairdresser Ethel (Aditi “Dot” Saigal), nerdy science guy Dilly (Yuvraj Menda) and Reggie (Vedang Raina), who’s important only because his dad is the editor of the local paper. They all attend a big party at Veronica’s house and after she makes her grand entrance where she’s greeted with applause, she drops the needle on ‘Wooly Bully’ and everyone dances like their lives depend on it.

Archie goes on a date with Veronica and then Archie goes on a date with Betty and then there’s much hand-wringing about the town bookstore being sold and a big fancy salon opening to compete with the beloved favorite salon and then the school lunch situation gets HIGHLY DRAMATIC when the good food is subbed out for pre-made lunches. This is almost too much for anyone to handle, even without two minutes of plot followed by a lengthy musical number followed by two minutes of plot and then another lengthy musical number. Hey, at least this movie isn’t a bunch of boring talking, right? Eventually word gets out about the imminent destruction of Green Park for the hotel – the behind-closed-doors skullduggery includes bribing greedy local-government officials – and now the kids are all anticapitalist song-and-dance machines on the side of the public in the public-vs.-corporate-interests battle. Will they get all the petition signatures they need before the deadline? Maybe, if they spend more time stumping and less time breaking out into f—ing song.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Americanized throwback rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack is more Holly than Bolly, so The Archies delivered some mid-century vibes circa Hairspray, and there’s a protest sequence here that’s like Les Mis if it took absolutely nothing seriously.

Performance Worth Watching: The performances here are upbeat, albeit at the service of bland, wispy-thin characters who rarely stray from the usual variety of high-school-kid stereotypes (Archie himself is treacherously close to being a non-entity). But Kapoor and Menda do enough diligence to Betty and Dilly in lightly emotional moments to make them stand out a smidge from the rest of the pack.

Memorable Dialogue: Betty’s mom: “That tingly feeling you get when you like a boy? That is common sense leaving your body.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The Archies might just be too much of a cheery happy smiley deranged thing – and one could easily argue how it’s not fully committed to its own empty-headedness, or not deranged enough to be interesting. A bunch of y’all are going to key in on how a Godard reference and a musical number titled ‘Everything is Politics’ clashes with the cheery, superficial emptiness of, well, everything else about the movie, but let it be known that substance and Things To Think About are but two small flowers in a sprawling garden of color, silliness and chipper idealism. As it is, by the time we get to ‘Everything is Politics,’ a ditty that marks the emergence of Archie’s political awareness (like I said: Yeah Sure Why Not), we may be too numbed by the overall length and boilerplate plot of this feature to notice or care about what it’s saying, if it’s really trying to say anything, which it kind of isn’t.

Thankfully, directors Zoya Akhtar and Ryan Brophy have an eye for visual detail – the sets and costumes are unwaveringly vibrant – and fixate on movement of both the camera and the cast. They carefully nurture that dynamic, making up for some of the bromidic characters and this eyeroller of a plot, the conclusion of which is never, ever in doubt. The biggest ax to grind here is its adherence to the convention of musicals, which too often drag out unengaging plots to unseemly lengths; the ungainly second act of The Archies alternates between two minutes of story and bloated musical numbers before downshifting into cornball sincerity and letting the requisite Sad Musical Montage further bog down the proceedings prior to an uptempo climax. A lively jaunt through silly, longstanding IP shouldn’t test our patience like this. But here we are, gutting out a Betty and Veronica epic like it’s a trek up Everest when it should be a carefree skip through the mall.

Our Call: Appreciators of musicals may be more forgiving. As for the rest of us? The Archies is colorful and dynamic but ultimately doesn’t justify its run time. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.