I was having a really bad week when I headed into the screening of Snow White alone. I hadn’t been able to convince anyone to join me, as the film had gotten the worst pre-release internet buzz this side of Madame Web. Doomscrolling as I waited for the film to start, I was feeling super-anxious by the time the lights dimmed. And when it was over? Count me surprised, but Snow White actually served as a most unlikely tonic to the toxic world, making me feel a little bit better as I headed home.
Snow White is Disney’s latest live action remake—in this case of the 1937 first feature-length animated film that started it all for Walt Disney: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Slightly reimagined for modern times, the filmmakers indeed inject some diversity and more contemporary sensibility into the story. If you bristle at the sight of non-white people just living their lives or at the idea of Snow White dreaming of becoming a good leader for her people (instead of dreaming about marrying a prince), this may be triggering for you, but seriously folks… it’s time to get over it.
The opening number, before all hell breaks loose, has colorful townsfolk singing and dancing with a skip in their step and a twinkle in their eye. They are the blissful subjects of the kind King and Queen (the visual sensibility of the film is aimed squarely at tots, as the royals are always casually wearing crowns on their heads). You may as well bring out a platter of corn to make it more over-the-top hokey, but nay, the nice young Princess, Snow White (Rachel Zegler), instead brings out pie after pie to share with everyone. But a song later, the beloved Queen is dead, the King is wooed by a gorgeous sinister newcomer (Gal Gadot), and he is sent out to pasture (or the woods) never to be seen again. The new wife becomes the Evil Queen, and Snow White is relegated to lots and lots of mopping in the castle.
One day a poor bandit named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) breaks into the castle to steal potatoes, gets caught, and ever-kind Snow White sneakily releases him. He’s cute, she’s nice, so when she flees after the Evil Queen orders the Woodsman to kill Snow while she’s picking apples, you know they’ll meet again.
But not before she finds a cottage in the woods and takes a nap! The princess awakens to the controversial seven dwarfs. Early leaked photos of the set made it seem that the dwarfs were played by a group of diverse folks of diverse heights wearing hippie-dippy medieval wear. Those people are indeed in the film, actually playing Jonathan’s merry pack of thieves. Instead, the dwarves are full-on CGI animated, maintaining their cartoony huge heads, bulbous noses, and especially in Dopey’s case, huge ears. The uncanny valley is present in their eyes, especially for Dopey, who looks like a more angelic Alfred E. Neuman. Zegler is left acting and singing in what looks like entirely CGI-created scenes against these fully-CGI characters, surrounded by exaggeratedly cute, whiskery, big-eyed woodland creatures in a Technicolor sun-dappled forest. I kept expecting Shrek to lope into a scene.
Meanwhile, Gal Gadot is having a field day as the Evil Queen, playing her part with a mix of camp, petty snarkiness, and glamour. Gadot is fabulous-looking as a Goth Queen, donning slinky dark gowns and breathtaking bejeweled capes in dark purples and blues. Her taloned fingers clink with the most outrageously oversized baubles this side of Denzel Washington. And as far as I can tell, Gadot can actually sing! Her introductory romp “All is Fair” was my favorite of the film (the new songs are by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), and I can only hope that someone soon turns it into a Trump meme (“All is fair when you wear the crown / To be the queen means you do as you please…”).
Snow White ultimately surprised me as I ended up being kind of moved by the end. We all know how the story goes (Snow White IS the fairest of them all because she radiates goodness), and a fairy tale always ends well (at least the Americanized versions). So when I started looking at the story as a metaphor for our times… well, the film’s message of kindness and fairness resonated and made me feel a tad more hopeful. Who knew that an already-familiar story would hit me that way? Though it’s clearly aimed at the tots, this version of Snow White is certainly watchable for adults. And who knows, the film’s not-so-subversive message may get out there to those that need to hear it.
