Snow White (2025)

Score: 0.5 / 5

Leave real-life personas, politics, and overpublicized antics out of it, and Snow White suddenly becomes much less than a sum of its parts. Taken on its own merit, the most recent live-action remake of a Disney classic fails to coalesce, its disparate elements awash in more money and scrutiny than they apparently knew how to handle. Unfocused and sorely misguided, the film bastardizes its own possible intervention into reclaiming archaic fairytales by plucking specific visual elements from the original animated classic, spinning them into gaudy practical spectacle, and attempting to pass it off as reasonable, enjoyable entertainment. Y'all know I love Disney, but this film is rubbish.

Anyone attempting to retell the Grimm tale has a nasty uphill climb, because its characters and theme have become synonymous with sexist baggage tying women to value as a result of their physical appearance and pitting old women against the young while vying for love and power. Problematic elements like a child being abused, stalked by a strange man, and ultimately resuscitated by his nonconsensual lip-locking, need to be addressed. These, along with its requirement for seven short men in motley used as little more than comedic devices, have made the myth nowhere near as appealing or prevalent in our culture of mass media as, for example, Cinderella. Those select titles that have approached the story must do so with brave new aesthetics and theming in mind, such as the terrifying Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997) or the silly and fun Mirror Mirror (2012). 

Disney fails to do this, preferring instead to rehash its visual language around the title character and double down on spectacle rather than honoring either our nostalgia for the original 1937 animated film or the story on which it is based, which is quite violent and scary. In removing teeth from the source material, the new film squanders its potential stakes, rendering the proceedings simplistic and too sweet, like a confectioner's end-of-day discount sale. To expand the original's brief runtime, more material is clumsily packed in to this iteration, mostly manifesting in the film's final act which, like in the remake of Dumbo, speculatively offers a story of how Snow White might assert her own claim to the throne and liberate her feudal homeland from the tyranny of her evil stepmother.

The problem is that, while it's a fine impulse, it's been done before. And better. Snow White and the Huntsman, for all the unspecific criticism it garnered, bravely imagined a high, dark fantasy vision of the story while positioning its heroine as an oppressed political subject on the lam and rabble-rousing before returning to overthrow the queen's destructive rule. And it was more convincing, both in its admittedly vague politics and in its call to violent action. Disney's update, conversely, depicts its heroine as a wide-eyed simpleton, wishing away her opportunities in favor of small creature comforts before triumphantly sashaying into "my father's house" -- a crucial misstep in the dialogue that elicited audible groans from audience members in our screening -- to watch the queen defeat herself. It's profoundly, disquietingly stupid writing, tone-deaf and wholly out of touch with our present.

New songs by Pasek and Paul (The Greatest Showman, Dear Evan Hansen, Spirited, and recent new additions to the Disney songbook), though arguably enjoyable, are shoehorned into this material with no reason or rationale. A marketplace song and dance about this being a place "where good things grow" doesn't make any sense with the IP, but offers a flavor of other, better marketplace musical numbers (if you know, you know); the song bookends the film in opening and closing scenes, suggesting that the film will include some environmentalist ideas, which it does not. Again, Snow White and the Huntsman, of all things, had more to say on that subject.

Meanwhile, Rachel Zegler's simplistic and cartoonish portrayal of Snow White -- which was a difficult, dull character to begin with -- never manages to feel real or earned, and her questionable agency gets sidelined by a plot that forces her into obvious next steps for "development," if you can call it that. Her song about "Waiting on a Wish" is perhaps a necessary update from "Some Day My Prince Will Come," but its poppy new energy cheapens its supposedly character-building purpose. The only pleasant new song, for this viewer, came in the romantic duet between Zegler and her character's paramour, Jonathan, who is notably not a prince in this version. Jonathan as a character is useless and functionless, but the song is pretty great and Andrew Burnap plays him with a refreshingly knowing charm and self-awareness that it otherwise sorely lacking in this film.

Gal Gadot's Evil Queen is even more frustrating than Zegler's character, for similar reasons: neither the writers nor designers reimagined it in any compelling way nor have the actors provided what is needed to give fresh blood to these archetypes. Much like her counterpart, actually, Gadot simplifies her character to its most basic and boring elements. Decked out in obnoxious, impractical sequined gowns that do nothing for her amazing body, Gadot flicks her nails and arches her brows as if that's all it takes to craft a memorable villain. Her voice coach should be blacklisted from the industry; instead of leaning into her own voice, Gadot screeches out a pinched tone with stilted, unnatural inflections. And that's before she even starts singing. Her musical numbers -- yes, the composers created one for her -- have the energy of an amateur drag queen in a high school show choir, as she parks and barks while blaring her lyrics in flat tones and awkward phrasing. She's not even given a name (historical Disney canon has the queen as Grimhilde, which is delicious and should have been referenced at least), further underscoring the film's cultural incompetence.

The screenplay's efforts to update the story, which I've already characterized as inept, take as their primary goal an unpacking of the word "fair," which bears further discussion. "Who is the fairest of all?" Traditionally, we know this question refers to physical beauty, a judgment of light complexion and pleasing countenance. This film repeatedly -- and I mean too often -- questions this by forcing consideration of fairness as also about a measure of justice or equality. The "trials" of Snow White in exile, if we can call her cozy little cottage and built-in servants a hardship, aim to test her ability to be kind and gentle and fair in dealing with conflicts that arise. Other than its remolding of the male love interest, this is the only aspect of the film I found intriguing, despite its heavyhanded and inarticulate but redundant deployment in the screenplay.

Apart from these, there is much more yet to criticize. Painting the castle and its peasants as obligated slaves to an apple-pie-baking industry is frankly an insane notion that doesn't work. The choice to cast anybody as the dwarves (Tituss Burgess voices Bashful, and I had literally no idea until the end credits), regardless of their physical size or ability, and then create the visual characters wholly as CGI monstrosities that should give those unnerved by the uncanny valley a run for their money, is simply inexcusable and irresponsible in this day and age. The potentially scary moments that should have been expanded upon -- notably Snow White's escape from the huntsman, her adventure into a terrifying forest, and the Queen's violent and desperate transformation into a hag to entrap her -- are all scaled down to be their barest and most meek, as if Disney was afraid to have even the most basic threat embodied against their heroine. The choice to have Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman) of all characters "grow" from his experience and end up the narrator reveals a sentimental obsession from the filmmakers that eschews substance in favor of clumsy charm. The dwarves' mining operation is given no purpose or significance, making their existence meaningless in the context of the film. The costumes are chintzy and look cheap -- a gobsmacking revelation, considering this film's disgusting budget -- and Snow White's iconic outfit looks about as expensive as something pulled from a plastic bag in Spirit Halloween.

I don't like writing negatively about art, and everyone will have their own opinions of this picture. But, as a longtime fan and apologist for Disney and most of its live-action remakes, I regretfully will never recommend this film and never watch it again. Its crushing disappointment is no one's sole fault (though Erin Cressida Wilson and Marc Webb have a lot to answer for), but I found almost nothing entertaining or even worthwhile about this abysmal exercise in inanity.