“SNOW WHITE” (2025, 109 min., directed by Marc Webb)
The latest of Disney’s efforts to re-animate their catalogue of classic movies goes all the way back to the beginning: “Snow White” is a live-action remake of 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Walt Disney’s very first feature film.
Disney often refers to their live-action retreads as “reimaginings,” adding songs or rejiggering dated, Eurocentric stereotypes with diverse new casts. Those intentions are admirable, if creatively dubious.
While it’s nice the House of Mouse is refurbishing its old rooms, it’s still the same old house. In other, more cynical words, it’s nostalgia bait.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that this live-action model has generated huge profits for the studio. The live-action incarnations of “Aladdin,” “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Alice in Wonderland” each grossed over a billion dollars worldwide, with “The Jungle Book” not far behind.
By this metric, “Snow White” is an outlier.
“Snow White” is a far cry from the box office rewards of previous Disney live-action efforts, hitting less than $100 million worldwide in its first week of release. Considering the film’s $270 million price tag, that’s enough to make at least seven Disney executives Grumpy.
At nearly 90 years old, I would argue enough time has passed to justify a return to this story for a new generation. However, the methods Disney used to do so are questionable at best. It must have been hard to “Whistle While You Work” if hardly any of it was working.
Rachel Zegler, the film’s star, is not the problem. Zegler was born to be a Disney princess. The actor is gifted with a powerhouse voice and brings an earnest decency, beauty and morality to Snow White.
Unfortunately, Disney paired Zegler’s very real talent with a painfully artificial film. Maybe “Snow White” would have worked better as a soundtrack, considering how hideous the CGI-generated effects are.
I mean, for all of the 1937 film’s quaintness by modern storytelling standards, it’s gorgeously animated. Meanwhile, there is not a single frame of “Snow White” featuring a digitally rendered animal, green screen background or CGI spell that measures up to the painted beauty of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Or most modern practical effects, for that matter. It’s particularly heartbreaking to see the film’s costumes, which are utterly gorgeous, clash against the manufactured golden hour haze.
This problem is nowhere more apparent than in the seven dwarfs themselves. Doc, Sneezy, Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy and Dopey may have been removed from the title of “Snow White,” but their garish, ghoulish CGI recreations are nonetheless resurrected to bumble across the screen. Rather than casting real actors to play the seven characters, “Snow White” renders them each in a photorealistic version of their cartoon bodies, which may be the worst decision the new film makes: To see human skin stretched across a cartoon’s skull is to witness horrors.
Conversely, the most iconic and scariest part of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” – the Queen’s transformation into a poison apple-toting hag – is turned tame by its lackluster digitization.
For maximum enjoyment of the “Snow White” experience, I recommend turning on the film’s soundtrack while you’re doing work around the house. I promise that would be a better use of two hours than actually watching the film.
Rating: 2/5
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