Archie Month: The Archies

 The Archies (2023) isn't the first Bollywood movie to be inspired by Archie Comics, and it won't be the last, but for now it's the only one that's officially licensed.  Still, the movie has more to offer than just familiar character names.  There's a lot of style and a tremendous sense of place.

When rich girl Veronica Lodge (Suhana Khan) returns to her home town of Riverdale after two years in London, she's delighted to be reunited with her best pal Betty Cooper (Khushi Kapoor).  She's also intrigued by the idea of reuniting with Archie Andrews (Agastya Nanda), incorrigible flirt, aspiring musician, and former boyfriend.  It sounds like the perfect opportunity for an Archie-Betty-Veronica style love triangle, and that is exactly what happens, (It's right there in the title, after all.)

However, Archie's wayward heart isn't the focus of the movie.  Which is just as well, because Archie doesn't make a good impression during the first part of the movie; say what you will about Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, but Rahul would never forget Anjali's birthday, even if he was distracted by a date with Tina.  Archie tries to follow his heart, but his heart isn't very bright and he ends up kissing both girls in quick succession despite dire warnings from his level-headed (unless there's a hamburger involved) best friend Jughead (Mihir Ahuja).

But there's trouble in Riverdale.  Veronica's father Hiram (Alyy Khan) plans to buy up the businesses in the center of town, replacing them with a shopping center owned by him.  And his plan works, with basically no opposition; Veronica is briefly upset because Betty's father Hal (Satyajit Sharma) lost his bookstore, but Hiram arranges a new job for him, and helping the family of his daughter's best friend makes everything better, right?

However, that's not Hiram's only scheme.  He wants to build a luxury hotel, because every Bollywood billionaire tries to build a luxury hotel sooner or later, and he plans to build it in Green Park, the literal and figurative heart of Riverdale.  There's a local tradition that when a child turns five, they plant a tree in Green Park, so most of the town feels strongly rooted to the place.  There's no way the town council will approve a hotel in the park, so Hiram enlists Dawson (Vinay Pathak) to change minds by any means necessary, and to be the frontman so that the Lodge name is not attached to the project.

This is the sort of problem that will inevitably be solved by a group of plucky teenagers putting on a show, and there are plucky teenagers aplenty: Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead, of course, but also comedian and cub reporter Reggie Mantle (Vedang Raina), apprentice hairdresser Ethel Muggs (Dot.), nerd with a secret Dilton Doily (Yuvraj Menda), massive athlete Moose (Rudra Mahuvakar) and his tiny girlfriend Midge (Santana Roach).  In other Archie continuities Reggie is usually the foil, but here he's pretty much the moral center of the group, and is the one to discover the evil scheme in the first place.  Archie, on the other hand, requires a musical number performed by Miss Grundy's class before he starts to grow some political awareness, and it takes him a while to really dedicate himself to the cause.

Archie is an important character, and his narration acts as the barest whisper of a framing story, but the emotional core of the story is the relationship between Betty and Veronica; they might be rivals, but they're friends first, and Betty stands by her friend even when the rest of the gang suspects her of spying for her father, and the love triangle is resolved in an amicable and sensible way, without the need for Veronica to name her newborn daughter Betty and then conveniently die, leaving behind a stack of eight letters.

All that said, the real star of the show is Riverdale itself.  The Archie dynamic works really well when translated to a Bollywood setting, with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai being one of many examples, but making the movie a period piece and rooting it strongly in the Anglo-Indian community gives The Archies a tremendous sense of style and a cottage-core sensibility.  It's light, fluffy and utterly delightful.

That said, I am kind of baffled by the decision to make a movie about the Archie Comics characters, in which the band "The Archies" is an important plot point, and not have the band perform "Sugar, Sugar."  Maybe they're saving it for the sequel.