Snow White, the latest live-action remake of a classic Disney film, has finally been released after enduring what is perhaps the most tumultuous production in the 102-year history of the studio. The production upsets included, but were not limited to: a global pandemic, three sets of reshoots, multiple lengthy delays, a writer’s strike, numerous rewrites, and more controversies than you could shake a magic wand at. And yet, through it all, Snow White has proved itself to be… just okay. The movie is neither terrible nor particularly good; it is squarely average, tinged with moments that lean toward either extreme.
Among the controversies surrounding this movie, one of the most divisive is the changes Disney has made to the original story. Despite all the arguing, most of the changes are broadly positive and simply a natural consequence of turning an 87-year-old cartoon into a live-action blockbuster. Snow White now has a much more defined personality and a great deal more agency in the story, which is a very welcome improvement on the original. Also improved is Prince Charming, who has been entirely replaced by a new character, Jonathan, a Robin Hood-esque bandit living in the woods who is saved from the Evil Queen by Snow White. This makes a lot of narrative sense and avoids the more uncomfortable aspects of a random dude showing up and kissing what he presumably thought was a corpse. Unfortunately, Jonathan is as wooden as a board and has exactly zero chemistry with Snow, making their inevitable falling in love, which happens in the span of a single afternoon, feel completely unearned. The ending of the story also differs heavily from the original film, and though it isn’t executed nearly as well as it could have been, it still represents an improvement, which honestly applies to nearly every aspect of the film’s writing.
While the writing is generally better than its predecessor, the presentation certainly leaves something to be desired. The original, despite its faults, managed to perfectly capture the feeling of a fairy tale. The same simply cannot be said of the remake, which feels like a mass-produced kids’ film devoid of the charm that made the 1937 film so successful. Speaking of things devoid of soul or charm: the dwarves.
Besides Snow White’s coterie of forest critters, the dwarves are the only CGI characters in the movie. The decision to use CGI was probably a well-meaning one. Disney has attempted to avoid controversy surrounding the use (or lack thereof) of actors with dwarfism. The decision to adapt the 1937 designs as closely as possible, however, is a completely baffling one. Even besides the CGI, they don’t look like anything else in the movie, they stick out like gross digital thumbs with their odd, cartoonish proportions, which look incredibly weird in live action. The dwarves are always out of place, frequently grotesque, and occasionally downright unsettling.
Ultimately, Snow White takes two steps forward and one big step back; for every improvement upon the original, there’s an entirely new problem unique to this film. Whether or not the good outweighs the bad is a matter of opinion, but it’s clear that the public doesn’t seem to care. At the time of writing, the film has made back only a fraction of its gargantuan $270 million production budget, and it isn’t expected to break even anytime soon.
