The Archies is just a movie that could & should have been avoided in the first place by NetflixIndia & by a director like Zoya Akhtar who always have been associated with the best of cinema in India, it would have saved Netflix tremendous loads of money to fund in some quality content on the lines of TVF or maybe something like Kohrra or CAT.

Story : The Archies starts with the introduction to the town of Riverdale somewhere in the Northern India which is inhabited by the Anglo Indian's(citizens with mixed Indian & European ancestors).

We are introduced to the characters of Archie Andrews(Agastya Nanda), Veronica Lodge(Suhana Khan), Betty Copper(Khushi Kapoor), Jughead(Mihir Ahuja), Reggie Mantle(Vedang Raina) & Ethel Muggs(Dot.) enjoying their respective lives in this picturesque town.

The story directly dives into the return of Veronica & her family to the town of Riverdale, all the friends uniting back, Archie Andrews stuck in a love triangle & the intentions of Veronica's father to build a big hotel in the middle of Green Park which is heart & soul of Riverdale.

Performances : I shouldn't talk about it, because everyone acted really well except the main lead characters, having such a great supporting cast with expressionless lead cast was just painful to watch & it just doesn't end at expressions, even the dialogue delivery is just really bad especially for Suhana Khan & Khushi Kapoor, Zoya it seemed had intentionally avoided taking close up shots for any of the actors.

Direction and Screenplay : The Gully Boy director has always shown us how brilliant she is with her cinema be it Dil Dhakane Do or Made in Heaven, she knows on how to engage the audiences to the screen & over here it just seemed as if Zoya was not on director's chair, bad acting, non engaging screenplay, can't imagine Zoya not noticing all this during the shooting.

The credits where due, cinematography looked terrific(especially loved the entry scene of Dot on the cycle & camera switching from rear to front), colours/sets/costumes were all perfectly done.

Music : This is a musical story and it had to have great music, while some songs are really good such as Sunoh & In Rahoon Mein, the rest feel underwhelming & this is not the expectation when you have Shankar Ehsaan Loy at the helm of it.

Good/Bads : Avoid it, save time and probabaly go & watch something worthy, the movie shouldn't have been made in the first place because The Archies has so much to it that you just can't fit all in a short runtime, the audience needs to know Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge in detail, each character needed to have their own arc for the audience to feel for them & connect with them, this is what Riverdale did in the starting seasons even though it lost the grip in last few seasons but still the audience came back in for their favourite characters.

The main leads really need to excel on their acting capabilities, dialogue delivery & this movie did not offer them anything that they could take away from their debut launch except the hard lessons.

Zoya Akhtar has a dent on her sky high filmography with TheArchies but we still know how good she can be when she wants so waiting for the next Tiger Baby production.

Sorry, but this turned out to be a nothingburger of a film. Efforts are visible on the visual aesthetics front, especially in creating a Riverdale that almost looks and feels real (most of it is shot in Ooty and Mumbai's Aarey area), but the same doesn't translate to the storytelling or performances. Given it's a musical, there's a song breaking out every 5-7 minutes in the first hour, and with a very basic love triangle at its core (which is casually treated in the comics), the lack of disconnect becomes evident. Another central issue begins brewing in the backdrop, and this takes up a bulk of the film's second half.

In fact, it almost felt like a breather when there was no song popping up for a stretch of 30 minutes or so. This offered valuable time to understand key characters beyond their peripheries. Also, since the film requires Indianizing these comic-book characters, there are some interesting touches. For instance, Jughead is a hardcore foodie but also the guy who questions Archie about his two-timing. Also, it was an inspired storytelling choice not to make Betty and Veronica compromise their friendship for the sake of fickle teenage love. Reggie isn't just the good-looking second fiddle, but he carries the most empathetic core in all of Riverdale. All of this only makes sense when there's enough to make you care for its niche Anglo-Indian characters with niche Anglo-Indian problems.

Amongst the 16 tracks, "In Raahon Mein" and "Yeh Saari Aawazein" are hummable with that quintessential Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy signature. The rest rely on their visual presentation, especially the Dear Diary tracks by Dot. I don't know what to make of the performances overall, but no one really stood out. I may need to see them in more films to make a better assessment (even Jr. Bachchan took years to become a seasoned performer, mind you!). As an "ensemble", they do display watchable (?) levels of chemistry. That diverts it from turning into a complete trainwreck.

Endnote: Grabbing an Archies double digest to remind myself how GOOD it feels to flip through the pages!

What a horrible one this was. Wanted to just abandon the movie mid-way. Poor direction, poor storyline, poor acting. The actors didn't even look good. Their accents were funny. Seems like Zoya Akhtar made this movie just for a few Bandra houses. Amitabh Bachchan's grandson is not hero material at all. Suhana Khan didn't fit well. She is similar to Swara Bhasker. Rich roles won't suit them. Khushi Kapoor looked funny. Other actors looked plastic. Wasn't able to find one thing to praise in the whole movie. Maybe some other director could've saved the film. The casting too was poor. All that hype and promotion came down to nothing.