Review: SNOW WHITE

 by Rob DiCristino

Heigh-F*cking-Ho

“Once upon a time, there lived a lovely little Princess named Snow White,” reads an ornate storybook page in the opening frames of Disney’s 1937 animated masterpiece, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. “Her vain and wicked Stepmother the Queen feared that some day Snow White’s beauty would surpass her own,” it continues. “So she dressed the little Princess in rags and forced her to work as a Scullery Maid.” You know what’s great about that opening? It’s concise. It’s clear. It’s focused. We’ve identified our major characters, their motivations, and the potential for conflict between them. “Start as close to the end as possible,” said Kurt Vonnegut, and it turns out “Once Upon a Time” is a fairly handy tool for doing just that! It allows us to cut through extraneous details like, “How did Snow White get her name?” or “What was the socio-political situation in the kingdom preceding the reign of the evil stepmother?” In other words, the stuff no one cares about, the stuff that mucks up a movie’s gears at the precise moment it needs to be firing on all cylinders.

Well, Marc Webb’s Snow White is full of that stuff, so buckle up! We begin with young Snow White (Emilia Faucher) getting a crash course on noblesse oblige from her royal parents (Hadley Fraser and Lorena Andrea), both of whom are treasured by the common folk for their generosity and grace. After the Queen’s untimely death, the good King inexplicably marries a ruthless witch (Gal Gadot as the Wicked Stepmother) who quickly murders him, snatches the kingdom for herself, and sends Snow White (played as an adult by Rachel Zegler) to the aforementioned scullery. Snow White toils away with her scrub brushes until a handsome rogue named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap, grasping at Carey Elwes in The Princess Bride but never coming close) reminds her how awful the Stepmother’s reign has been for the people. We assumed she already knew this — again, she’s spent her adolescence in a scullery! A SCULLERY! — but it’s apparently enough motivation for her to break free, unite the kingdom, and return it to its former glory.

You’ll notice that this only vaguely resembles the plot of Disney’s animated film — or, for that matter, the Brothers Grimm’s original tale — and that we haven’t even gotten to the seven dwarves yet. That’s probably because Erin Cressida Wilson’s (Secretary) screenplay does everything it can to sideline Snow White’s paternalistic elements in favor of a more modern and adventurous approach, an inspiring story of a hero rising from the ashes to lead her people to salvation. While this is a positive change in theory — animated Snow White does, after all, spend most of her film extolling the virtues of happy housework to seven childlike goofballs before a handsome man shows up in the last act to take her to wife — what actually results is a disjointed, atonal, and, worst of all, catastrophically dull film that fails to make any coherent argument about the benefits of compassionate governance or true love’s power to overcome the yoke of oppression and hate. It’s Snow White without any of the magic, an inert and toothless failure to live up to its lofty thematic aspirations.

But who cares about the plot? Kids don’t pay attention to the story mechanics, Rob! What about the songs? The dwarves? The apple? The mirror? Dopey, Sneezy, Doc? Well, they’re all fucking boring, too, folks! That’s the whole problem! Rachel Zegler is a compelling enough screen presence with a lovely voice, sure, but for all her protestations in the press to the contrary, there is absolutely no texture to this new Snow White: She’s established as a doe-eyed idealist and remains one throughout, stopping occasionally to lament “the way things used to be” but never justifying her failure to act against her Stepmother. Her “I Want” song tells us she can be a brave leader, so why isn’t she? She recognizes the injustices, so why doesn’t she stop them? This is most maddening during a duet with Jonathan (“Princess Problems”), a song that should illustrate the ideological differences between the would-be lovers and inspire them both to grow, but instead it just repeats a fact on which they both already agree: The Stepmother is mean and everyone should live in peace. We know!

“He’s ranting about the story again,” you say. Well, what else is there to talk about? Gal Gadot continues her run as Hollywood’s worst movie star, but at least this time she’s bringing her dead-eyed stiffness to a role that actually benefits from it. She’s fine! All the controversy surrounding the film’s portrayal of dwarves — note their conspicuous absence from the title — clearly scared the feckless cowards at Disney into shaving off much of their screen time, with the lion’s share of antics going instead to Jonathan’s band of Merry Men. Animated in a style that splits the difference between photo-realistic human beings and Shrek characters, the dwarves are a total flop; their big moments amount to the “Heigh-Ho” sequence, a lesson on whistling for Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman), and a laughable scene in which Doc (Jeremy Swift) — who explicitly claims no medical knowledge — mends an arrow hole in Jonathan’s shoulder well enough that he’s able to trip the light fantastic when Snow White inexplicably declares, “It’s time to dance!” only seconds later.

Look, there’s no sense in going on. The fact is that these remakes are reliable money-makers, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll slow down anytime soon (the trailer for Marcel the Shell director Dean Fleischer Camp’s Lilo & Stitch remake played just before my screening). But history is sure to remember this as a period of artistic bankruptcy from the Mouse House, a period in which an undisciplined corporate entity was more willing to trade on a hundred years of goodwill than it was to invest in original stories from the very creative voices those years have fostered. It’s not even that these remakes sour the legacy of classic films, either — I’m hardly a Disney purist and have no objection to revisionist takes on these stories. It’s just that they’re all just so goddamn boring, so bereft of charm or inspiration. They’re movies greenlit by middle managers who insist they be copied on emails just to prove their authority, who make redundant comments in meetings just so everyone can hear their voice. Sure, these movies are helping keep theaters alive through lean times, but what kind of life are they really providing?

Snow White hits U.S. theaters on Friday, March 21st.