Do you remember the tragic fairytale about a princess who falls victim to her jealous step mother, a prince and 7 appropriately named small men who save her? Well it’s evident nobody on the production team of the new live action (sort of) remake of Disney’s Snow White remembered.
Snow White is the modern take on the beloved 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that just hit the theatres and it must’ve hit hard because I got whiplash.
Forget Prince Florian, the man of her dreams, here’s a random guy named Jonathan. What’s that, you were expecting charming little dwarven men? We’re sold out of those but we do have these grotesque CGI dwarves with features so visceral they’ll make you want to whistle while you run.
It confuses me why they’d opt for these genuinely terrifying animations over real people with dwarfism, don’t worry though there is a cast member with dwarfism in this movie and he’s allegedly really good at the crossbow. (He does not stop talking about the crossbow.)
There’s been controversy about this remake on the internet for years, but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was just, you know, those vocal anti-woke types who were decrying its attempts at modernising the storyline without actually seeing it. But man it was bad.
The casting of Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen and Rachel Zegler as Snow White was entirely wrong. Gadot seemed unable to stay in character and her performance was just underwhelming. Meanwhile Zegler, who is clearly talented, was just not the right fit for the role of Snow White despite her beautiful voice and gave a disappointing performance.
I love Disney. I love musicals. But tell me why I wasn’t mentally prepared for this Disney film to be a musical even though there were songs in the original animated cartoon. I was not prepared for it to include so many songs that desperately try to be everything they’re not.
It felt like a cheap imitation of our beloved hit broadway productions Dear Evan Hansen, Legally Blonde and of course, they certainly didn’t forget Wicked. Classic songs like Some Day My Prince Will Come were missing in lieu of new songs like Princess Problems and The Silly Song. And then I learn that those responsible for the new songs are Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, ofLa La Land and The Greatest Showman acclaim and it feels actually insulting that they did this.
The songs and choreography in this film are so bad they’re almost camp. Almost. There was so much potential for this to be good, and at every turn it’s like the actors and production team asked themselves ‘how can we make this worse?’ I know! How about a dramatic single snowflake falling perfectly onto Snow White’s fingertip? You know we have to have our Frozen moment.
This was truly a disappointing and at times baffling watch, as much as I hate to say it, I can’t in good conscience tell anyone to see this movie. Save yourselves, the real poison apple was looking at the faces of those dwarves a little too long. This took an hour and a half of my life away from me, and I’ll never get that back.
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to the cinema graveyard you go.
