Snow White

3 outta 5

Snow White is yet another in Disney’s seemingly endless parade of Live Action Remakes, and even though the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is a technical classic that moved the animation medium forward, it isn’t exactly resonating with audiences for today. For proof, one has to look at the remake’s lackluster box office. These remakes seem to be created as Disney doesn’t know what to do and they might luck out like Lion King remake and make a billion dollars. This Snow White bobbles a few things, tonally it adds some rather modern stylistic twists, there is a lot of self-actualization, the Prince isn’t a Prince anymore, he’s a quippy bandit pirate leader with a crew of diverse bandits. The Dwarves are still here, although somewhat nightmarish CGI monstrosities. At least the remake drops the bad washing song by the Dwarves from the original. Classic or not, that song blows.

Snow White (Rachel Zegler) is a princess working as a scullery maid for her wicked stepmother, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). Daily, the Evil Queen asks her Magic Mirror who is the fairest of them all, and the Magic Mirror always responds that it is her, until one day it states Snow White is the fairest. Enraged, the Queen tells her loyal huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her, but he is unable to do it and Snow White flees into the woods. She crashes at a random house until she is discovered by Seven Dwarves who are happy to let her stay, aside from Grumpy that is. Snow White befriends a dashing bandit leader, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), but the Evil Queen has plans, and a poisoned apple, to take care of Snow White once and for all.

The big bombastic Disney Heroine song, which is a staple of the Disney Princess genre but absolutely wasn’t a part of the original Snow White, is “Waiting on a Wish” but it honestly just sounds like a weak cover version of “How Far You’ll Go” from Moana. It may be a modernized take no guff update of Snow White’s “I’m Wishing” or “Someday My Prince Will Come” but with more self-actualization bravado. The whole movie is kind of like that, where it seems like it’s almost embarrassed of the source material. There certainly isn’t any room in this version for a cute scene where Snow White and her animal friends clean up the Dwarves house, there’s quirky CGI characters and soaring songs to be had!

Zegler as Snow White can certainly do earnest and has a great singing voice, and some of her random expressions are fun to watch. Snow White takes control of her destiny a bit more this time, and Zegler conveys that Snow White has an inherent goodness that makes her the fairest. Gadot’s evil Queen is a blast because Gadot plays it large and loud which is fun, there’s a lot of cackling and she goes from pouty to mocking to angry on a dime. And she has fun as the Old Crone version, leering and handing out poisoned apples. There’s no Prince in this version, instead Jonathan is the leader of a bandit crew and he makes a lot of quips about being independent like a modern hero, and even when he sings a song about his bandit life the melody seems pretty directly ripped off from “You’re Welcome” from Moana. His bandit crew are just sort of there, with a guy who keeps saying he’s a master of crossbows which is about as close to a running gag as this movie gets.

There are a couple of small changes to the story that are okay but superfluous. Snow White herself is given a more tragic backstory that wasn’t needed, being a maid for the Queen is tragic enough. In the original, the huntsman fakes out killing Snow White by delivering an animal heart, but here he puts in an apple in the box, which is a dumb as she clearly would have checked. The finale of the original is the Queen is done in by her own bloodthirsty rage, the Prince kisses Snow White and the movie ends, happily ever after. Here Johnathan (once again, not a prince for some reason) kisses Snow White, she wakes up, realizes she must confront the Queen, leads a sort of singing revolution to the Queen’s gate, and her inherent goodness causes the Kingdom to turn on the Queen. Also, the Queen is sucked into the magic mirror like the dark dimension out of Doctor Strange. But probably the biggest, and most frustrating change is that in a climatic moment, Dopey speaks, trying to give Dopey some deeper meaning.

When the movie does recreations of the original songs, it is pretty good, like “Hi Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” are updated and peppy. Gadot’s Queen nails an original song about being evil that is very over the top and campy which is what the movie needs, as oftentimes this movie can be a bit of a slog. Overall, Snow White feels like yet another pointless remake to pad out the Disney Plus app. And there’s more than enough of these pointless remakes already. But this does look great (awful Dwarf CGI aside), and has some fun moments to make it a kind of enjoyable return to this story.