Snowed Under
It’s far from perfect, but this ‘Snow White’ is also far from the shit show everyone expected… or wanted.
Snow White
Director: Marc Webb • Writer: Erin Cressida Wilson, based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Starring: Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Andrew Burnap, Ansu Kabia, Patrick Page
USA • 1hr 49mins
Opens Hong Kong Mar 20 • I
Grade: B-
Can we just, for five fucking minutes, drop the whole “She’s not white” bullshit about Latina actor Rachel Zegler’s casting as a fictional fairy tale princess, in the semi-live action remake of a cartoon film produced during the height of Klan expansion in 1937? The new version of Snow White, a rehash of Disney’s 83-minute original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, has more to bitch about than the draconian argument that fictional metaphors need to be “faithful” to their source material. If that’s the case, let’s make sure we honour the Brothers Grimm and include the prince raping Snow awake because that’s what happens in “original” – or was that Sleeping Beauty? Oh, and let’s not forget a protracted scene where she pukes her guts out after eating the poisoned apple. We want to be true to Grimm. Think of the children!
In the 23rd (!) live-action remake of its animated canon, Disney has typically pulled its punches and kinda sorta updated the admittedly groundbreaking classic for an okay retread that’s more running on the spot than creative progress. The elements The Amazing Spider-Man director Marc Webb (who feels like a hired gun here) opts to keep – Snow’s dress and bullshit hair-do, true love’s kiss, the original songs, the, gulp, dwarfs – and what to refresh are curious at best, and half the time leave Webb and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (The Girl on the Train) frantically trying to get out of the corner the House of Mouse has backed them into. Bottom line: this story is fundamentally flawed, Zegler was right, and ideally it would get a whole new story grafted onto its bones. But that’s not Disney’s game so what we’re left with is a muddle of some good parts, some bad parts and a whole lot of shrug. It’s better than The Little Mermaid and the nightmare fuel that was Pinocchio, not as good as Maleficent or The Jungle Book (which set the bar for these) and slots firmly in the middle.
She’s fair. Enough with the racism
There’s been a billion Snow White adaptations and “reimaginings” over the years, among them the Kristen Stewart-starring Snow White and the Huntsman, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, with Sigourney Weaver as the Queen, Mirror Mirror with Armie “Chompy” Hammer as the prince, the requisite Snow White porn and of course, Snow White and the Seven Fellows by Chow Sze-luk and Lo Yu-kei from 1955. It involves a charsiubaau. But I digress. In Webb’s Snow White, Snow (Zegler, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes ) is a pure – and it must be said, beautiful – princess born during a blizzard, hence her name, with considerably more agency than she had in ’37. After her mother dies her father marries another beauty who becomes The Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) and turns the once peaceful, single-commodity economy kingdom (it’s all apples all the time) into a authoritarian hellscape (so, 2025).
The story follows the beats of the 1937 film, albeit slower, but the major points are here. When the Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) can’t bring himself to murder Snow, she flees into the magic forest, gets swept down the river and comes out… somewhere sunny and with much better hair. She meets the seven dwarfs when she pulls some B&E action on their home in what appears to be the Uncanny Valley and later the forest-dwelling rebel Jonathan (Andrew Burnap, WeCrashed), and after a second murder attempt via poisoning Snow steels herself to storm the kingdom’s gates, lead the suffering people in revolution and bring the Queen’s tyranny to an end. This would be great if there were more fire to Snow’s radicalisation, but it’s all very harmless; she defeats the Queen with kindness and hope, which is also fine but it just adds another layer of narrative and thematic mud.
There’s plenty that’s good in Snow White, and anyone arguing otherwise is piling on for the hell of it. Wilson inserts a few legit jokes and Webb keeps things moving at a brisk pace and mostly avoids bloat (house cleaning song notwithstanding). It’s got cute animals. Elvis DOP Mandy Walker, near legendary 10-time Oscar-nominated costume designer Sandy Powell and production designer Kave Quinn (HBO’s The Regime) all turn in some gloriously heightened work, though why no one let Powell strip Snow of that stupid dress is anyone’s guess. Of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s (La La Land, The Greatest Showman) new songs “Waiting on a Wish” is the highlight but these two have as distinct a sound as Disney’s other go-to Lin-Manuel Miranda at this point but, so mileage may vary. Regardless, Zegler makes the most of them because yeah, gurl can sing. Gadot, however, is as unfortunate a singer as she is actor, but her villain showpiece “All is Fair” almost transcends her sinister vocals.
The weak spots primarily stem from Disney’s insistence that the film have dwarfs. The part mo-cap, part CGI, all creepy dwarfs were rendered on at least three levels when you add voice work from the likes of Tituss Burgess, Andrew Barth Feldman (a Broadway breakout for Dear Evan Hansen) and dwarf actor Martin Klebba, and though your eyes eventually adjust, it just begs the questions of why have dwarfs who are not dwarf actors, why does this septet of miners need to be dwarfs anyway, and will Disney every grow a pair and just let creators create and find an organic way to address these issues? Tone is a bit challenging too; some parts may be too frightening for very young kids (the magic forest escape is scary) and the “revolution” may be too facile for older ones. There are plenty of sequences lifted directly from other Disney films; the opening “Good Things Grow” looks like it was shot on a leftover set from Beauty and the Beast, and that’s just the first. Snow White is hardly a disaster. It’s just trying so hard to please everyone it has no identity and no purpose. And to those whining about how this is “Not my Snow White”, or my Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings, or Little Mermaid, or Footloose or whatever, remember: the people watching this stuff now are not you. Get over it.