Loren Whidby

There are no positive things to say about this movie, other than —perhaps— Rachel Zegler’s voice. The plot is scattered, hard to follow, and overall poorly written; it’s reminiscent of a cruise line misadventure. The characters bounce back and forth between attempting to fit into a poorly defined historical period and matching campy, modern songs. The beauty, magic, and sheer terror that made Snow White (1930s version) a true childhood classic is watered down and lost. Though Zegler claimed that the love story was ‘completely removable,’ it was one of the only plot points that was trackable. There was no true underlying plot driver other than the father —who got no resolution whatsoever— though they briefly set up multiple options. (Economic instability and its connection to the mines, how is the Evil Queen magical? Why did the townspeople randomly remember that they had a life previous to the last ten years??) Don’t even get me started on the Dwarves debacle, because it is truly disappointing that Disney couldn’t highlight actors with dwarfism in the iconic roles from the movie while hiring a token actor with dwarfism to say a total of 3 lines and shoot a crossbow to fill a plothole. This is a gross oversight of a huge opportunity to highlight actors with dwarfism. Another critique, there was no actor in the film I could honestly call good, as every interaction was forced or superficial. The costumes were a mixture of spirit Halloween and millennial-modern black box play, and the lighting made everything look overly saturated and fake. Snow White is supposed to be a Grimm fairytale, not a sun-soaked fever dream. To wrap up the debacle, the ending of this movie was a very nonsensical attempt to make Snow White’s ‘name remembering talent’ enough to unseat what is supposed to be an ultra-powerful authoritarian ruler. Plausible.On the heels of great remakes like Cinderella, Maleficent, the Beauty and the Beast, and most recently, The Little Mermaid, this film lost Snow White’s core, which is love and care. Disney also sidelined the major event of the fairytale, which is the sleeping curse. I think Snow White must have been asleep all of four minutes. Thank goodness I waited to view this until I had free access on Disney+. Fumble by Disney.