They said it couldn’t be done, but Disney’s live action remakes have hit a new low with Snow White, an insanity-inducing take on one of the most important films of all time. Snow White features all we’ve come to expect from these so-called movies: terrible special effects, ugly locations, languid pacing, new songs that sound like nothing, the works. There’s something grueling about this one in particular, where Disney is bleeding its legacy dry for no real reason. This isn’t going to make money – and it likely cost over $300 million. Snow White has been ground down into a bland paste for nobody except those who take blankets to the movie theater.
In this rendition, Snow White (Rachel Zegler, who does her best and does not deserve to be thrown to the racist wolves like Disney has done) is a princess with loving parents who teach her that the kingdom belongs to everybody. Unfortunately, her mother passes away and her father falls under the spell of a mysterious foreigner (Gal Gadot) who takes the kingdom for herself. Now, I don’t plan on defending Gadot, one of the worst actresses of our modern era, a Zionist with no class, but it is definitely a problem that the film’s villain is the only one with a vague foreign accent. To be clear: this woman can’t even walk in a straight line without it feeling like she’s reading cue cards, but the “foreign villain” thing is something we should move on from. The Evil Queen turns Snow White into her slave, forcing her to spend her days scrubbing floors and washing potatoes.
When Snow White starts questioning the Queen’s judgment, she has her sent to the woods to be murdered. When the woodsman relents, Snow White escapes and finds herself in a tiny cottage with seven beds. As with all these things, this all looks like it was filmed in a parking lot. Disney’s green screen warehouses need to be dismantled. But the worst is yet to come: the dwarves themselves. I don’t like to use hyperbole, but the dwarves are the scariest CGI monstrosities I’ve ever seen in my entire life. They are disgusting digital nightmare creatures, with freakish proportions and Polar Express faces. Dopey looks like Alfred E. Neuman had been tortured in a dungeon for fifty years. Grumpy has liver spots. Each shot of their horrifying faces made me want to die. Mercifully, it seems that the dwarves were added in post to a story that no longer required them, so they aren’t around as much as they could have been. The production of this film deserves its own review, but I don’t need to peer that deeply into the mouth of madness. I never want to see a CGI animal ever again in my life.
Gone is the nameless prince who wakes Snow White from her slumber and whisks her away. In his place comes Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), a rascally thief in the vein of Flynn Rider who spends most of his time negging Snow White. Let me say that again: NEGGING SNOW WHITE. The new song “Princess Problems,” in which Jonathan makes fun of Snow White for her privilege, does not make sense in context. She was a slave! She’s not just some out of touch royal! Snow White is riddled with these problems, taking imagery from the original film whenever it suits it, and discarding everything else.The attempt to deepen Snow White’s character but keep the Evil Queen one note also hurts the film. She’s iconic, sure, but she’s flat. Even if Gal Gadot were a competent actor it wouldn’t help!
If there is any hope, Snow White is the last of these gigantic Disney live action remakes. First of all, they’re basically out of movies to remake, unless we want the radioactive waste that would be live-action Pocahontas. There are vague plans for Tangled and Hercules, but with any luck those will be smothered in the crib. Ideally, no one will see Snow White, Zegler can move onto her West End Evita run with little fuss, and we will never see Gal Gadot ever again. Now that’s a wish worth waiting on. That final sentence was a reference to one of the new songs, which ideally none of you will ever hear.
Snow White
2025
Dir. Marc Webb
109 min
Do not see this film
