Magic Mirror on the wall, is the latest cynical Disney live-action remake the shittiest of them all?
It seems like a fair line of inquiry considering the amount of hatred directed at the remake of the 1937 animated classic Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.
First, there was the casting of Rachel Zegler, the breakout star of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, whose part-Colombian heritage irked both Disney literalists and race purists.
Dogmatic fans and rampant racist abuse would have been easy enough to dismiss had Zegler not embarked on what can only be described in PR terms as a complete catastrofuck, appearing to diss the original tale and indulging in some eye-rolling “girl boss” posturing on red carpets which turned the whole internet against her.
Then there was the representation issue, with Disney initially replacing the seven dwarfs with seven “magical creatures”. This prompted accusations of “wokeness” - a term which originally signaled a positive level of awareness and compassion but is now a death sentence due to the political right’s disparaging co-opt of the word. Regardless, the ensuing backlash led the House of Mouse to rejig some things (more on that in a bit) and not cast actors with dwarfism to avoid perpetuating stereotypes. Instead, Disney opted for CGI – which cheated the same actors out of work. Lose/lose.
As if that wasn’t enough controversy for one film, Israeli actress Gal Gadot has advocated for her home nation, while Zegler publicly backed Palestine. This fuelled rumours of a rift between the two leads.
Rewrites, reshoots, ballooning budgets, a scaled back press tour, a low-key premiere and an exhausting-to-read laundry list of polemics later, and Snow White finally hits theatres.
So, let’s get back to the original question: Is it the shittiest of them all?
Surprisingly, no. Granted, the bar is so low with the live action likes of Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, The Lion King and Pinocchio that elevating Snow White above these disasters is damning with very faint praise. However, it’s not the cursed slumber it could have been. Just a passably fair reimagining.
Directed by Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man), from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train), Snow White ends up sticking to the familiar template – with a few tweaks here and there that aren’t as daring or smug as many were led to believe.
A princess is born during a snowstorm - hence 'Snow White'. Nice touch.
She’s beloved by her parents and the kingdom. Sadly, saintly mommy Queen (Lorena Andrea) snuffs it and is replaced by a wicked stepmother (Gadot). Then, benevolent daddy King (Hadley Fraser) mysteriously disappears and the tyrannical harridan effectively lives up to her name by becoming the Evil Queen. She who hoards the riches of the kingdom, leaves the people to starve, and makes Snow her housemaid.
Our heroine grows into a young woman (Zegler) with a Lord Farquaad bob haircut. She isn’t waiting for her prince to come but wants to be a good leader for her people. Snow does, however, meet a young rapscallion with gorgeous hair named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap). That vanilla dreamboat replaces the prince figure as a Robin Hood-like character who steals food from the rich to give to the poor.
Then, a magic mirror informs the Evil Queen she’ll never be the fairest of them all if Snow White continues her pesky oxygen habit. In another neat little rewrite, the Queen’s magical powers derive from her beauty, hence the threat Snow poses is more existential than pure vanity this time around.
Thankfully, the woodsman (Ansu Kabia) changes his mind when it comes to cutting out Snow’s heart as ordered, and helps her escape to the woods, where she takes refuge with seven... Oh, the horror... Oh, the CGI horror...
Despite a committed performance from Rachel Zegler, who almost *almost * manages to make you forget that Gal Gadot simply cannot act or convincingly read a line, there’s no getting around the skin-melting CGI monstrosity of the seven dwarfs. Granted, the film was between a rock and a hard place when it came to casting, but the end solution of having creepy digital avatars that are both photorealistic and Uncanny Valley-levels of distracting is misjudged in the extreme. How this nightmare fuel got past the unsharpened pencils in the quality control committee will remain a mystery for the ages.
Once you've accepted your new sleep paralysis demons, Snow White snowballs into a tonally discordant and overly long clutter leading to a rebellion that involves Jonathan’s bandits – those aforementioned “magical creatures” who were clearly at one point intended as substitutes for the original septet. It’s fourteen scamps for the price of seven in the revolution to liberate the kingdom from Queen Charisma Bypass and restore a time of fairness when "the bounty of the land belonged to all who tended it".
Highly commendable though monarchy defiance is - and this is the closest Disney has ever gotten to seeing the benefits of a communist utopia, so well done there - many of the empowerment-by-buzzword beats still land with repeated thuds.
At the end of the day and all controversies aside, Snow White is not the total calamity many expected - or hoped for. So, everyone relax and remember that Tim Burton’s Dumbo exists.
However, that doesn’t stop it from being another clumsily executed, nostalgia-pandering update that joins a never-ending conveyor belt of inessential Disney back catalogue retreads. It may have its Broadway energy and heart in the right place, but as evidenced by the new tune ‘Waiting On A Wish’ - which replaces the original film’s leading song ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’ - it’s alright when its playing but completely forgettable once the moment’s gone.
"Now, a formula to transform my beauty into ugliness," schemed the original animated Evil Queen in 1937.
88 years later and it's clear that Disney could use a new formula too. Unlike that memorable villain, however, the corporate behemoth is in dire need of a potion that transforms their ugly practice into beauty once more.
Our advice? Call up Emilie Blichfeldt - she knows how to compellingly and daringly reimagine a fairytale.
Snow White is out now.
