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Snow White (2025)
2025 in film continues to be a disappointment thus far. From the "if it Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" school of filmmaking comes 2025's Snow White, an overblown and overly complicated reimagining of the Disney classic that suffers from an overstuffed screenplay that steals from other fairytales, and over the top musical sequences, making a one hour and 39 minute film seem fourteen hours long.
In this version of the story, Snow is actually living with the wicked queen when the queen learns that she is no longer the fairest of them of all. Instead of sending the huntsman into the forest to find Snow White to kill her, she sends him and Snow out to the wilderness on a pretense and then orders her death and the return of Snow's heart in a box. He, of course, can't do it and tells Snow White to disappear where she eventually encounters a cottage that turns out to be occupied by seven little guys who work in their own mine.
I'd like to start out by saying that when I went online to watch this movie, I put in the title character's name and seven other movies came up along with this one. Did we really need another version of Snow White?. We needed another version of Snow White like we need another version of A Christmas Carol. Erin Cressida Wilson's screenplay combines too many elements from other films and fairytales. In this version of the story, Snow White is being held captive by the Wicked Queen and a big scene is devoted to Snow's hair being cut off that smacked of Rapunzel. Snow's journey into the woods on her way to the Dwarves reminded me of the perils that Westley and Princess Buttercup face in The Princess Bride, a little too intense for this story. That nightmarish vision as she runs into the woods was just a little over the top, making the segue into her Wizard of Oz-like entrance into the dwarves cabin greeted by thousands of CGI animals just a little hard to swallow. It looks like she travelled through time.
There was also a big plot point that I couldn't get past. When the Queen sends the huntsman into the woods with Snow White, he gives her the box to put her heart in after she's dead so that the queen can reward the huntsman with anything he desires. When the huntsman returns, the Queen encounters the mirror about her beauty first before looking in the box and learning that Snow was still alive. Why wouldn't she have looked in the box first? And upon discovering the box had an apple in it, why didn't she kill the huntsman instantly?
Someone decided that the film needed some new songs supplied by the composers of The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen and none of them are even in the territory of memorable and the songs we know and love like "Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work" are blown completely out of proportion and go on much too long. And what happened to "I'm Wishing", which would have been a perfect fit for Rachel Zegler's voice.
I loved Zegler in Spielberg's remake of West Side Story but she's kind of one note here. And if you're going to CGI the dwarves, why not use A-list actors for their voices? If the truth be known, they should have gone with real litt\le people for the dwarves too. Four of the actors voicing dwarves I've never even heard of. The only completely satisfying performance in this film came from Gal Gadot as the Wicked Queen, but even her performance doesn't make this film worth the trouble it was.
2025 in film continues to be a disappointment thus far. From the "if it Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" school of filmmaking comes 2025's Snow White, an overblown and overly complicated reimagining of the Disney classic that suffers from an overstuffed screenplay that steals from other fairytales, and over the top musical sequences, making a one hour and 39 minute film seem fourteen hours long.
In this version of the story, Snow is actually living with the wicked queen when the queen learns that she is no longer the fairest of them of all. Instead of sending the huntsman into the forest to find Snow White to kill her, she sends him and Snow out to the wilderness on a pretense and then orders her death and the return of Snow's heart in a box. He, of course, can't do it and tells Snow White to disappear where she eventually encounters a cottage that turns out to be occupied by seven little guys who work in their own mine.
I'd like to start out by saying that when I went online to watch this movie, I put in the title character's name and seven other movies came up along with this one. Did we really need another version of Snow White?. We needed another version of Snow White like we need another version of A Christmas Carol. Erin Cressida Wilson's screenplay combines too many elements from other films and fairytales. In this version of the story, Snow White is being held captive by the Wicked Queen and a big scene is devoted to Snow's hair being cut off that smacked of Rapunzel. Snow's journey into the woods on her way to the Dwarves reminded me of the perils that Westley and Princess Buttercup face in The Princess Bride, a little too intense for this story. That nightmarish vision as she runs into the woods was just a little over the top, making the segue into her Wizard of Oz-like entrance into the dwarves cabin greeted by thousands of CGI animals just a little hard to swallow. It looks like she travelled through time.
There was also a big plot point that I couldn't get past. When the Queen sends the huntsman into the woods with Snow White, he gives her the box to put her heart in after she's dead so that the queen can reward the huntsman with anything he desires. When the huntsman returns, the Queen encounters the mirror about her beauty first before looking in the box and learning that Snow was still alive. Why wouldn't she have looked in the box first? And upon discovering the box had an apple in it, why didn't she kill the huntsman instantly?
Someone decided that the film needed some new songs supplied by the composers of The Greatest Showman and Dear Evan Hansen and none of them are even in the territory of memorable and the songs we know and love like "Heigh Ho" and "Whistle While You Work" are blown completely out of proportion and go on much too long. And what happened to "I'm Wishing", which would have been a perfect fit for Rachel Zegler's voice.
I loved Zegler in Spielberg's remake of West Side Story but she's kind of one note here. And if you're going to CGI the dwarves, why not use A-list actors for their voices? If the truth be known, they should have gone with real litt\le people for the dwarves too. Four of the actors voicing dwarves I've never even heard of. The only completely satisfying performance in this film came from Gal Gadot as the Wicked Queen, but even her performance doesn't make this film worth the trouble it was.