Disney’s animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was released almost 90 years ago, so it makes sense that it would need a fair bit of updating for this live-action remake. There’s a determined effort to make this story feel modern, but despite plenty of invention and some very spirited performances, this Snow White still feels peculiarly old-fashioned and ultimately quite confused.
Written by Erin Cressida Wilson (Girl on the Train) and directed by Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) the retooled version still begins with a young princess, Snow White (Rachel Zegler), confined to a life of servitude when the widowed king marries a wicked sorceress (Gal Godot). After the king disappears, the evil queen, jealous of Snow White’s beauty, casts her stepdaughter into the forest to die. Instead, she’s taken in by a group of seven strangers. From here, it begins tying itself in knots trying to undo all the iffy outdated bits.
Snow White is now a strong young woman who wants to reclaim her crown and lead her people, rather than a helpless naif who does housework for strangers while waiting for a prince to rescue her. Her songs about wishing for love have been replaced with new ones about simply wishing. The queen, however, is still driven by pure vanity and terror of ageing. Sexism is so baked into Snow White that you can’t eradicate it all without destroying the premise. Equally, Disney’s reluctance to use people with dwarfism for comic relief seems entirely right, but then what do you do with the seven other people in the title? Other than, in this case, remove them from the title? Here the answer is to create a septet of unspecified beings using CG, which is initially very creepy but you do eventually get used to it.
Zegler manages to give a bit of backbone to a sappy character
The film becomes increasingly unsure of what to do with itself. It’s no fault of the actors. Zegler, with a voice that rings like crystal, manages to give a bit of backbone to a sappy character. Gadot could do with playing things several degrees camper, but she seems to be enjoying herself. And Andrew Burnap gives some spark to the love interest role, now a Robin Hood type rather than royalty.
This is far from the disaster that was predicted. It’s cute and cheerful, but its efforts to make Snow White both respectful to the original and relevant to a new audience leave it stranded in some smudgy grey areas.
In cinemas worldwide Fri Mar 21