Disney’s New Snow White Heigh-Hos from Animation to Live-Action with Kid-Friendly Enthusiasm
For all its dated elements, Walt Disney’s 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs remains a masterpiece. The title character isn’t exactly the most modern heroine in the world: She happily sings about how someday a prince will come to save her from the drudgery of her everyday miseries and later takes great pride in being little more than a smiley-faced maidservant to a septet of messy, pint-sized miners.
But Snow has spunk and Snow has flair, and those miners are a courageous, heigh-ho’ing hoot. Best of all is the despicable Evil Queen. Her transformation from the not-so-fairest of them all (at least anymore) to elderly, wart-nosed hag hawking poisoned apples is one of the most spectacularly realized sequences in all of Disney animated history.
While the timeless Grimm fairy tale has been reinvented for the big screen several times over the decades, Disney has always been content to allow its animated version to be its last word. Until now. With filmmaker Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man) calling the shots and The Greatest Showman tunesmiths Benj Pasek and Justin Paul crafting new songs, this live-action Snow White attempts to make the character slightly more modern while also retaining the ambiance and tone of the hand-drawn original. They almost pull it off.
They score major points in casting West Side Story star Rachel Zegler as the empathetic princess. She’s sublime. Not only can she belt out a tune, she understands her assignment perfectly. Zegler makes Snow a heroine who retains many of the luminous qualities of her predecessor, yet also one that feels every bit at home in the 21st century. This young woman may want everyone to whistle while they work, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to do all the labor herself. Zegler’s Snow is not waiting for a prince to come and save the day. She’s more than capable of doing that for herself, thank you very much.
The same cannot be said for her cunning adversary, the Evil Queen. Gal Gadot is a pale shadow of the 1937 version of this villain. She is no match for iconic voice actor Lucille La Verne who originally gave her life. Gadot’s performance is like something out of a bad RuPaul’s Drag Race challenge. She vamps it up with hammy inelegance. Her movements are awkwardly mechanical. Her vocal inflections have no menace and carry even less weight (and I’ll be kind and not talk about her singing). Worst of all, her Evil Queen isn’t scary, and her transformation into the old hag is not anything to crow about (fabulous practical makeup effects notwithstanding).
In fairness, Gadot does look two or three levels beyond stunning. Academy Award winner Sandy Powell (Shakespeare in Love) has outdone herself. The Evil Queen’s collections of form-fitting gowns and voluminous capes capture the light with blinding magnificence. While the entire creative team outdoes itself, it is Powell who takes things to astronomical heights. As bland as Gadot’s performance might be, she remains a ravishing feast for the eyes.
The remainder is a wildly mixed bag. The seven dwarfs Snow encounters in the forest are brought to life via next-level performance capture and have a purposefully cartoonish, three-dimensional physicality that duplicates their animated doppelgängers from the ’37 version down to the last detail. Yet there’s also something uncomfortably creepy about them, their dead-eyed demeanor more reminiscent of The Polar Express or Beowulf than Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes or Avatar.
Then there is the replacement of the original’s charming prince for a dashing rogue named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap). He has a nice voice, and does share one musical number with Zegler (a ditty entitled “Princess Problems”) that brought an enchanted smile to my face. But he’s also an emotional wet noodle, and that makes caring whether Jonathan and Snow end up happily canoodling next to impossible.
On the plus side, I expect kids will adore this Snow White. This is the most G-rated PG motion picture I’ve seen in ages. There’s nothing offensive or controversial. The woodland creatures (almost all CG creations) are beyond cute, the dwarfs make goofy mischief throughout, and the songs — both old and new — are thankfully toe-tapping enough that children will love all of them.
Maybe that’s the point. Webb shouldn’t direct a musical; he doesn’t have the visual panache to pull it off. But he is wise enough to have cinematographer Mandy Walker (Elvis) shoot Zegler as if she were a blindingly bright star inexplicably crashed to the earth. He also knows exactly who the prime members of his audience are, and as such keeps the momentum brisk, the themes broad, and the comedy goofily chaotic.
Does that make this undertaking magical enough to warrant a look? With all my reservations, I do find that to be the case. Though far from a dream come true, this Snow White isn’t without its enjoyable aspects. I watched it with a smile and a song, every bluddle-uddle-um-dum somehow injecting my heart with joy, often when I least expected.
– Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)
