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.

The Front Room (2024)

Score: 2 / 5

Expectations can ruin films. Due to marketing or other, we've all experienced major letdowns when a new work of art doesn't quite match what we hope it will be. Personally, I attempt to leave expectations at the door to better access the film on its own terms, but we are all victims of that pitfall nonetheless. Yet when a film itself -- by nature of its premise -- establishes its own promises of what's to come and then fails to deliver that, disappointment and frustration will (and, I think, should) dampen your experience. For a recent example, I fully expected Babygirl to be a smutty but delicious erotic thriller with a nasty denouement; it turned out to be a shockingly restrained, nuanced, and thoughtful navigation through sexual mores in an increasingly fraught landscape of desire and agency.

The Front Room, produced by A24 and written and directed by Robert Eggers's two half-brothers Max and Sam, promised a lot to us, not least of which was the return of Brandy to the silver screen. She plays Belinda, a non-tenured professor who is treated like an adjunct at her troubled local college, who is pregnant with her public defender husband Norman (Andrew Burnap). With maternity leave looming and being barred from promotion at work, she quits, pushing their family into dire financial straits. The story, essentially, takes off from here: when Norman's estranged father dies, his stepmother calls to invite them to the funeral, and though he does not really want to attend, they do together. There, they encounter Solange, the aging and infirm widow, who pressures them into accepting her offer: take her into their home for the rest of her life, and she'll pay their mortgage and will them everything in her estate. Desperate but worried, they accept, and Solange moves into the titular space of honor in their house.

With a tagline like "All hell moves in," we are meant to expect that this arrangement will be torturous for Belinda and Norman, and indeed it is. Belinda, very pregnant and home alone, must care for Solange, who is rude and crude, deliberately mispronouncing her name and aggressively demanding to be catered to, hand and foot. To Belinda's nascent horror, Solange is also incontinent and mostly incapable of moving freely about the house, much less cleaning up after herself. Mothers-in-law may be stereotypically monstrous, but this is on another level, made much worse by Solange's fire-and-brimstone brand of Christianity (it seems to be an offshoot of Pentecostalism) and literally certified racist social philosophy. If Rosemary's Baby was about a pregnant woman trying to free herself from menacing forces closing in around her, The Front Room is about a pregnant woman needing to purge her own home of the evil within. Belinda and Solange are set up as two forces of nature meant to engage in a final battle of wits, belief, and power.

But that never actually happens. Sure, there are lots of encounters and fights and horrific messes (and I do mean lots), but the film never feels as claustrophobic or frightening as it should. Rather, it injects absurdity into most of its scenes, aided by bright, lurid color schemes that make everything feel more surreal than disturbing. The messes, disgusting as they are, are never really leaned into beyond a few nightmarish montages that flick by like a circus fever dream. Worse, Solange is never as menacing as she should be with her white supremacist and evangelical bona fides. This makes Belinda appear all the more incapable or weak, to say nothing of Norman, whose tender words of affirmation for her are proven, over time, to be practically all he has to offer in their marriage, their family, and their life. His ineptitude is almost as infuriating as Belinda's longsuffering, especially being a strong Black woman and soon-to-be mother.

Brandy does give a capable performance, but she can't do much with a character all but sapped of her own empowerment. The other actors are mostly forgettable and do little of import here. Kathryn Hunter, though, plays Solange with a cruel deftness that is intoxicating and certainly worth watching the film to experience. Unfortunately, her demoniac presence is similarly hindered by the screenplay, which seems scared to actually make the film be about anything. Tonally, the film is a mess, which doesn't help, and various scenes feel directed as thrilling, horrifying, silly, gross, and tepid, without any connective tissue or purpose from one sequence to the next. There is almost no tension, no fear, not even brazen attempts to fight back from any character. Is Solange's piety a cover for Satanic rituals? Will Solange bring other racists to Belinda's house and terrorize her? At one point, I even wondered if Solange would die and that Belinda's baby would be some perverse reincarnation. None of these pan out, and literally any of them would have been a worthy climax for this premise.

Instead, we get a familiar and quaint ending that might have worked in the '90s but simply doesn't now. With that to finish off this insipid and generally dull "thriller," I was left wondering what exactly the writers, producers, and distributors were thinking with this tired and shallow final product. A few more rounds of workshopping would have certainly helped, along with a strong dose of inspiration.