The Archies

The Archies isn’t ALL show and no substance. The usually bitchy-ness one expects to be the flavor of a high school story, is replaced by kindness and acceptance. A sweet moment between Dilton and Reggie made my cold heart happy. There is a rather random but enjoyable little bop about how everything is political, right from the lunch we eat to the way we dress for school. In a lesser film, this would have been a dance off between 2 women fighting over the attention of a boy. Here it is a sing along goading its young viewers, into political action, the sequence setting the stage for a later sequence with a group of kids standing up against town management to protect trees in the city park. The writing ALSO wants to talk about what it means to be “Indian”, why minorities deserve to live where they chose to, and in portions these attempts at civic statements come through. There is also a slightly too underlined, but memorable scene where Reggie’s publisher father, played by Luke Kenny tells Reggie about the importance of a free press, and what it is like to be a journalist operating under the government’s eye. If the internet has shown us anything recently, is that genz is today very much interested in talking about all the above. Even if Agastya looks only mildly amused amidst it all.