The Archies (2023) dir. Zoya Akhtar

Zoya Akhtar is one of my favorite working directors. Along with her brother Farhan Akhtar, an actor-writer-director mostly known for his work as a leading man, she has made a series of effectual, transcendental films. This is both her greatest asset and her biggest criticism: the films of Zoya Akhtar reach for the good, the true, and the beautiful, sometimes to an excess. I like to think of her as the antithesis of The Wolf of Wall Street’s cinema of indulgence. The characters that populate her worlds are, at heart, good people (even when those people are disgustingly rich). The main characters don’t have small journeys of self-discovery, but alter the trajectory of their lives and communities in imitation of almost religiously infused dreams of better worlds and better lives. Naturally, for me, the release of a new Akhtar film is something of a household event bookmarked in advance and with the usual distractions sidelined. Even though Archie Comics and Riverdale aren’t really my thing, it didn’t matter to me. The Archies, a Netflix Original featuring the acting debut of Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Suhana Khan, was appointment television.

Maybe the new trajectory should have mattered, though. In many ways, her latest film departs from the rest of her filmography marked mostly by modern (b)romances aimed at adults: Luck By Chance (2009), Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), and, the film that endeared her to many of her most adamant admirers, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011). The Archies is aimed at a much younger and more immature audience, amplifying the always over-dramatized and cheese-abundant aspects of Farhan’s dialogue writing.

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