Taking Walt Disney’s masterpiece Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, the first full length animated film that started the studio in 1937 and attempting to make a live action version of it is no easy feat. It’s called a Masterpiece for a reason and any attempt to modernise or adapt it was going to be difficult. Flash forward 88 years later, and early photos from the set, casting choices and comments made by the talent involved created a snowstorm of online hate towards the film. The backlash forced Disney to delay the movie by a year and engage in some heavy re-shoots and re-tooling of the story.
Snow White (Emilia Faucher as a child and Rachel Zegler as a young adult) lives in a castle with her parents, the Good King and Queen. They rule their kingdom with fairness, bravery, and love. They work together as a community, sharing the benefits of the fruits of the trees that grow in their valley. After her mother falls ill and passes away, her father meets a beautiful traveller, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) who inherits the kingdom when the king is sent off to war and doesn’t return. Snow White is turned into a servant, locked behind the walls of the castle while the villagers are turned into soldiers, carrying out the will of the evil Queen.
When the Evil Queen is told by her magic mirror that Snow White is the fairest in the land, she sends the Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to take her deep into the forest and kill her. The Huntsman takes pity on Snow White and lets her run away where she is guided to the home of the seven dwarfs. Her forest adventures unite her with a group of bandits led by Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) who plot to take back the kingdom from the Evil Queen.
The movie stays close to the original animated feature. There are entire sequences that are frame for frame the same, with only a few alterations to make it appeal to a modern audience with an understandably different idea about what makes a princess in the twenty-first century. Instead of waiting for a prince to save her, Snow White leads the charge in taking back her kingdom from the Queen. The romance plot is still here but less instant and more in line with modern Disney romance stories with banter (in song also) between two characters who eventually fall in love.
As a musical it delivers mixed results. The new songs like “Princess Problems” and even “Waiting on a Wish” pale in comparison to the classics from the original. They feel ripped straight out of the reject pile from The Greatest Showman and don’t add to the story. Fortunately, the classics like “Whistle While you Work” and “Heigh-Ho” are reinvigorated and build on the classic material becoming the best musical sequences in the film. Zegler a talented vocalist delivering bucketloads of old school Disney charm.
Director Marc Webb is no stranger to directing music based visual media, a lot of his early work was directing music videos (over one hundred) and he infuses that experience on-screen here perfectly. The reimagined Heigh-Ho sequence in the mines feels like it was inspired by the Seven Dwarfs Mine Cart ride at Walt Disney World, a flurry of colours, duelling mine cart races and singing CGI dwarfs make it one of the best musical numbers of the film.
While Zegler is front and centre her co-star Gal Gadot struggles. Her villain song is camp and hammy. Gadot’s Evil Queen is obsessed with beauty and using it to keep her power. One of the most iconic Disney villains ever is a (perhaps deliberately) camp pantomime who doesn’t feel particularly menacing.
Snow White manages to recapture the essence of the original animated feature and bring it into the contemporary milieu with a few tweaks and updates that make it a magical experience for kids. It will never reach the “Masterpiece” status of the original, but it does offer an updated lens on how we view true beauty and treat women. Snow White is carried by Rachel Zegler who is one of the best live action Disney princesses to date.
Snow White is in cinemas now
