REVIEW:
Surprisingly better than expected, it’s so funny how much hate this movie has gotten, and how much word of mouth will have you believing it’s awful. Turns out… it’s not. The movie is actually pretty decent, (although with expectations being so low, it works to this movies advantage.) And the way they add some new angles to the story while also keeping just about all of the main story points is kind of impressive. For example, actress Rachel Zeigler has said in comments that this is not about a woman waiting for a Prince to come rescue her. And she’s right. There’s no Prince here. Instead it’s a thief, Robin Hood-style, who steals from the wealthy Queen to feed the poor and hungry, and serves as the love interest.
The movie is a musical that has loads of new songs added to it, that were not in the original 1930s animated film. And for the most part they are pretty good. Especially in the first half. It would have been smarter to feature them mostly in the first half and then stop doing them as much in the second, because in the second half, you really need the stop to be moving along and not getting slowed down. But they don’t do that, and some of the songs in the second half do lose our attention and kill some of the momentum.
What does work here is the story about a woman whose mother dies and whose father remarries an evil woman, only to see him die, and the evil woman now take charge of the family (and the kingdom,) and imprison our protagonist. Snow White goes from being a princess to a servant. This is all very similar to the story of Cinderella, in terms of step mothers and forced labor. The difference here is the castle setting and royalty angle. But this Queen has magic on her side, in the form of a magic mirror that constantly tells her she’s the fairest, meaning prettiest. The magic mirror, as rendered by CGI here, is fantastic. It’s one of the coolest things about the movie.
The Queen sends Snow White apple picking and hires a huntsman to kill her along the way. Only the huntsman doesn’t do it, and leaves Snow White in the forest, where she ends up finding the cottage of the Seven Dwarves. These dwarves are all CGI rendered creations, and they look pretty great. Haters will talk about the uncanny valley, because the dwarves are of course not played by actual people, but they look about as good as CGI renderings of people can, while also being intentionally a little cartoonish. The dwarves are absolutely one of the best things about the movie. Especially Dopey, who gets his own subplot about learning how to speak, which is actually pretty charming.
Some people don’t like that Rachel Ziegler, a Latina actress, was cast as the lead. They say, “Snow White,” literally has the word WHITE in her name, and should be played by a white actress. They talk about how Mulan cannot be played by a white actress, and Black Panther could not be played by a black actor, and say that Disney is being too “Woke,” by casting Zeigler. Personally, my feelings are that it makes no difference since the movie is not about “white” culture in any way. Black Panther is about black culture and Mulan is about Chinese culture, so yes, a white person could not be cast in those. But here, having Zeigler cast in the role makes no difference to the story or feel of the film, and so it is perfectly fine.
And Zeigler has a fantastic voice, (she debuted in Speilberg’s West Side Story remake,) and really gets the chance to show it off in this film. Gal Gadot as the evil queen is also pretty good. There’s not a thing wrong with the casting here, including the CGI Seven Dwarves. I suppose the huntsman could have been a little more expressive or played by a known actor, but at the end of the day, these are small potatoes. It’s like having a problem with the group of seven bandits who befriend Snow White, because they are not the seven dwarves. People say, “were they supposed to the seven dwarves, and then Disney changed their minds and went the CGI route, but then kept these bandits in there anyway?” None of that matters. The bandits are fun and a nice addition, and it doesn’t really matter what the behind the scenes story is that led to their being in the movie.
The two songs of the Seven Dwarves, High Ho and Whistle While You Work, are the best songs in the movie. These, of course, are the iconic Snow White songs that fans of the classic film know and love (while the other famous song, “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” is not in this movie.) During the two Seven Dwarves songs, characters do all sorts of silly and comedic things that bring up slapstick moves like those of Charlie Chaplin in the Gold Rush. And there’s also lots of great effects work, not just on the characters, but on what they are doing. “High-Ho,” for example, takes place almost entirely in a cave with the characters riding in mine carts at record speeds along underground tracks. And it has them mining by touching the stones and diamonds and lighting them up, in cool, bright, Pacific Rim-like fiery colors.
So there’s a lot here that works. And that includes the change in the romantic relationship from the original. In the original film, a Prince happens to be wandering through the woods when he comes across a coma-stricken Snow White, and he gets off his horse, goes over to her and kisses her.. This is weird, of course. Forget the consent thing for a moment, although that is definitely a part of it too. But how about just going over and kissing someone you don’t know? Here, things are different. Snow White and Jonathan, the leader of the bandits, do have a relationship. They have fallen for each other, by the time she is in the coma. And in fact, one of the best moments in the film has Snow White tell one of the other thieves that Jonathan is selfish, and the thief explains to her that Jonathan took an arrow for her, by literally stepping in front of an arrow that was flying through the air and aimed at her.
While all of that does work about the film, what doesn’t work quite as well is the violence. It’s just not realistic in any way. Now this is not meant to be the action version of Snow White, (we got that in the Chris Hemsworth version, Snow White and the Huntsman,) but the movie puts itself in unnecessary positions where it has no point but to be unrealistic, and really shouldn’t have backed itself into a corner like that. The first of these comes when the thieves go up again a group of trained knights. The second one comes at the end, when the Queen has more than a lot of chances tn kill Snow White herself, and refuses all of them.
Regarding the thieves – knight fight, it’s completely ridiculous.