‘Snakes and Ladders’ series review: A bored game

Snakes and Ladders refrain from infantilising its lead casts or worse, acting annoyingly precocious. Ironically, the adults, some agonizingly caricaturish, come across as more juvenile. The series treats our protagonists as young adults who are well aware of the actions caused by their age-driven impulsiveness and the repercussions that come with it, and this works both as a boon and bane for the series. I relished how, despite starring a bunch of underage teens as its protagonists, it’s far from being a children’s adventure; there’s the usual level of violence and profanity (a child smashes an intruder’s feet with a hammer whose knee-jerk reaction is to swear under his breath) for those accustomed to Indian OTT content, but they thankfully don’t feel forced. If Game of Thrones can star children, why put a cap on it?

But these specks of thoughtful writing — like the episode where the kids almost get away with their shenanigans only to get caught by one of their parents or the scene symbolising a man’s oscillating mind with a shot of a kid on a swing — are few and far between. Snakes and Ladders suffer from an identity crisis. The film gets stuck between being a full-fledged young-adult thriller and a zanily penned dark humour. It falls flat and does little justice to the genres it tries to toy with. The characters, especially the ones played by adults are painfully uni-dimensional. The men are either baddies willing to go to any extent to survive or do-gooders mostly donned in khaki trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, while on the other hand, the women are clueless damsels in distress. The characterisation of the lead cast is not particularly ingenious either — the most studious one wears glasses and stutters, and the only girl in the gang suffers from a medical condition.

A still from ‘Snakes and Ladders’ 
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The series treats its characters and scenarios as large cogs of a machine rather than smaller chunks of a puzzle that have to fit in perfectly to reveal the bigger picture. It fails to linger in its moments and jumps from one set piece to another. Instead of shedding more light on the mentality and moral compasses of the kids subjected to adverse tribulations, the series takes the easy way out with convenient payoffs that make the gang’s getaways challenging and even a tad too dark.

The less said about the whole gangster segment, the better it is. Also, what’s with that Rolex-esque season finale ending? The series offers nothing to its seasoned and familiar performers, such as Naveen Chandra, Nandaa, and Manoj Bharathiraja. It’s more painful, considering Naveen’s earlier collaboration with Prime Video resulted in a much superior product, Inspector Rishi. Snakes and Ladders fall short of the standard the platform has created with its other thriller movies and shows as inconsistent writing and tonal inconsistency ensure that the dice get loaded against it.

Snakes and Ladders is currently streaming on Prime Video