Snow White

Snow White
Starring Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Andrew Burnap, Ansu Kabia
Directed by Marc Webb

Disney has faced scrutiny lately with turning their beloved animated classics into live-action movies, and while they keep receiving backlash for them, their success is undeniable. "The Lion King," "Aladdin," "Alice in Wonderland" and "Beauty and the Beast" have crossed the one billion dollar mark worldwide, while "The Jungle Book" and "Maleficent" came really close. So despite peoples' dismay over these remakes, they still go in droves to see them. "Snow White" is the latest live-action remake, but this one had a much steeper hill to climb as opposed to the others for many different reasons, and going into it I wasn't expecting anything even remotely average, and maybe it was those low expectations but I found myself entertained by it - but not something I'd want to watch again.

During a violent snowstorm, a king and queen give birth to their only daughter and call her Snow White. They teach her love, fairness, bravery and the importance of knowing everyone's names. But when the queen dies, the king remarries an Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) who values wealth, power, and - most importantly - beauty over everything else, and sends the king out to take on a threat and never returns. Snow White (Rachel Zegler) grows up confined in the castle walls, resorted to cleaning for the Queen, while the kingdom falls under darkness and despair while the Queen asks her Magic Mirror every day who's the fairest of them all.

One day Snow White finds Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) stealing from the Queen's provisions, and he says that he's the leader of a rogue group in the woods who defy the Queen and serve the one true king, making Snow White believe that her father could still be alive. After freeing Jonathan after he's captured, she showcases true beauty which the Mirror recognizes, thereby announcing to the Queen that she's no longer the fairest of them all, and she has her Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) send Snow White into the woods to kill her. Unable to do so, he tells her to flee into the woods where she comes upon seven kindly dwarfs who take her in, as she struggles with hiding and facing her destiny, while the Queen will stop at nothing to see Snow White dead.

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was the first Disney animated film, released back in 1937, and has been the gold standard by which all over Disney animated films have been pitted against. The original movie is one of the most beloved by all people, and making a live-action remake was always a big risk. That risk was compounded by numerous behind-the-scenes issues and controversies that made the film almost nonexistent, where people either demanded it be canceled altogether or just unceremoniously tossed into Disney+, but they still released it in theaters, and while it debuted at number one, it was also one of the lowest debuts in any live-action Disney remakes.

This film was muddied in controversy before the movie even came to the big screen, with numerous issues that threatened the movie's existence. One of the biggest was casting Rachel Zegler in the titular role, because in the original animated film Snow White was described as having skin "as white as snow." Zegler, a Latina actress, was an odd choice, with many comparing her to the backlash over casting Halle Bailey - an African American woman - as Ariel in "The Little Mermaid." While I was also skeptical of the casting, they made a big difference in how she got her name - here, she was named Snow White because she was born during a snowstorm, named to remind her of her resilience after surviving the storm. I can see why they went this direction, and honestly it didn't really bother me. Zegler did a great job in the role (apart from her awful hair, but that's how the original Snow White looked), and she showcases her singing talent to full effect, singing not only the Disney classics like "Whistle While You Work," but also songs written by EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, including the power ballad "Waiting on a Wish." She played Snow White as a multi-layered individual, someone who was at first afraid of speaking up, but finds her voice, her power, and her independence to stand up for what's right.

There was also several issues Disney faced with the casting of the Seven Dwarfs, with Peter Dinklage commenting that the film would portray them as backward, to which Disney then pivoted and revealed photos of the seven dwarfs but not dwarfs except for one, while the other six were a mixture of women and men of different color. This was also met with controversy, until Disney finally relented and turned the Dwarfs into CGI parallels to the 1937 Dwarfs. Honestly, the design of the Dwarfs was one of the film's shortcomings, as they looked awful, and a near Uncanny Valley appearance. Their designs drew me away from the story, and while the rest of the film was beautifully rendered (including the cute woodland animals), the design of the Dwarfs was indeed a downfall.

Then there was the comments Zegler made about the original "Snow White," saying it was weird that in the original movie the only way Snow White survives is a kiss from a Prince that she never met, who for all intents and purposes stalked her. People blasted her as being too "PC" and making Snow White more feminist, but again this wasn't an issue I had with the film. Times change, and it was refreshing to see another Disney princess take up the mantle of her own story and not allow her entire existence to be dictated by a man or a love story. Andrew Burnap's Jonathan was an original creation for this film, serving as Snow White's love interest but also her equal - she saved him, he saved her, their relationship was completely copacetic. He was a Robin Hood-type character who would steal from the Queen and had a merry band of misfit rebels who lived in the woods and served the one true king, making him more a hero than just a handsome prince who eerily watched Snow White.

Finally there's the political views that Zegler and Gal Gadot hold in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gadot - a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces - sided with Israel while Zegler is pro-Palestinian, serving as a wedge between not just the actresses but the fanbase as well. Gadot is another weak point in this film, as she doesn't emote any real emotion as the Evil Queen, and has a weak singing voice that feels overdubbed by someone else. She is thinly written as someone who thinks she's the fairest of them all, and when she finds out she isn't, sets out to kill the one who is. That's basically her whole character, and despite being a powerful witch, the conclusion is very anti-climactic and makes the film feel longer than it should've.

Despite all the controversy surrounding the film, ultimately "Snow White" was a decent movie with some great songs and a decent performance by Rachel Zegler, a movie unfairly criticized by the behind-the-scenes drama and not taken on its own merits. While it's not spectacular in any way, it's better than I expected it to be.

The Score: B-