'Snow White' briefing

1 (out of 4)

            “I’ve read so many stories where the prince saves the princess in the end — I think it’s time we change that ending”
“NO, YOU’RE TRYING TO MESS WITH TRIED AND TRUE STORYTELLING, IT’S BEEN FOCUS GROUPED AND IT WORKS! JUST LET ME SAVE YOU!”

If Disney’s dreaded remakes of their beloved original feature length films were a thing back in 2012, just before they began regularly re-adapting their 2D animated arsenal, it wouldn’t look too dissimilar to the cute, opulent revisionism of Mirror Mirror, especially when they had recently pushed something like 2007’s Enchanted. 13 years ago the not so modest Mouse certainly didn’t have the teeth for something like the LOTR-lifted dark fantasy grit of Snow White and the Huntsman, and since the twin film year has a third, a triplet in the Spanish silent homage Blancanieves, I'll say no recent inspiration comes close to that particularly magnificent little muted matador makeover. 2012 is really the cornucopia of Snow White media, since other than weird German sex parody flicks over the decades of the late 20th century (not that I’ve browsed) there’s only (one imagines) the more innocent 2007 version where Amanda Bynes goes to college, the crass but forgivable Sydney White. And these movies still managed to survive in a world where Shrek exists, having punctured the public’s mindset on princess fantasy in countless priceless ways, like Austin Powers all but forcing Bond to get Bourne serious.

But even if none of the aforementioned forebears existed, Disney’s Snow White (2025) would still be the same stale, repulsive, untenable flavor of corporate-concocted filler film content, maybe the queasiest and most unpleasant of the 20ish they’ve pumped out since Kenneth Branagh’s standard by which they would be judged, 2015’s Cinderella. It’s one of only two Disney do-overs that have ever really been OK by me — as the relative first of its kind, ignoring the 90s and Maleficent and such, Branagh’s traditionalist taste wins you over. I was also late to realize how much Dumbo helped itself with histrionics, capitalizing on a tiny narrative and letting Tim Burton make amends for just how agonizing Alice in Wonderland can be. As far as the most covetous, vacuous of pop filmcraft goes, director Marc Webb’s only competition in captaining crap and shepherding sheer creative confusion is Robert Zemeckis and his wooden Pinocchio, as each exude that awful feeling from their perfunctory, primarily profit-pilfering purposes, corrupting Walt’s earliest masterpieces.

So yeah, it’s one of those where every metric measures out a whopping failure — CG dwarves, abysmal, Broadway-brash musical numbers (/Waiting on a WiiiiIIIISHHH/) burying the tidy story, Gal Gadot’s arduous attempts at performance... Then there's Prince Charming, sorry I mean JONATHAN (Andrew Burnap) as discount Robin Hood and truly testing original songs (“Princess Problems”* is a special sort of smarmy torture) in addition to all the emotional and inspirational cues cribbed from (or just plain much worse than) those 2012 features that actually had reasonable respect for the balance between reinvention and reverence. For God’s sake they substitute “skin was white as snow” dealio via opening narration for some origin story about her birth the night of a snow storm, um WHAT? This shit was Grimm for sure — from the box office it had me hoping Snow White could be one of the last gasps of this godforsaken addendum to anti-art, ugh if not for Lilo & Stitch and the realization that time will no doubt bring about a live action Tangled, Frozen and probably Encanto, especially if they think they can force Moana’s practical redo only TEN YEARS OUT? Their pool will soon run dry (after Hercules and a few others) but not fast enough! Damn you Barry Jenkins! Hell, if Mufasa: The Lion King became a sleeper hit, maybe we’re stuck with this ever-stockpiling shitheap forever.

I just couldn’t let this one go, stinker or no — it made me sit through basically all these damn live-action remakes save the Lady and the Tramp no one knew existed. 2025’s Snow White is ruthlessly mediocre and obscenely unnecessary… I hold the original 1937 film in a special place in my heart for the wonderful rotoscoped animation and all the terrifying aspects Disney has only softened over the years (the scary wooded hallucinations, the climax where the dwarves make sure the witch falls off a cliff with the freaking LIGHTNING) and the timeless amusement of incredible slapstick sequences, delicate comedy and amazing, trifling little songs that this new movie almost makes note of before ruining them all. Don’t expect any innocent, kinetic kids movie cogency here. How about two crappy villain songs, a cobbled screenplay and an ugly, lifeless palette? And despite promises to keep outmoded sexism of romance at bay, it's somehow even more pronounced than the original and inducing ALL of the cringe. “Weird. Weird!”

Please stop fucking with real classics (or movies older than Iger) and you won’t end up with a 200 million dollar loss. This is Disney at its most disgraceful; what an overwhelmingly well-deserved flop! Of the live action redos, it's easily the most careless of them all, just kind of revolting, wretched and repugnant, dear Jesus this movie almost has an odor. But yeah I’ve only reviewed Mulan and Jungle Book I believe, and those impractical wastes of time and money still have this junk beat by miles. For Webb I’d rather watch The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and for Shrek 5 parody fodder, I suppose I had a decent laugh between the squirming and deep sighing.