When was the last time the live-action remake of one of Disney's animated properties presented something worth watching? One supposes Cruella had those Jenny Beavan-designed Oscar-winning costumes to recommend it for, and Winnie the Pooh was alright in its melancholic tone. By my account, the last wholly successful of these enterprises was Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella, released a whole decade ago this year. Part of it stemmed from a willingness to deviate from the original, an understanding of the tale's inherent qualities beyond its value as nostalgia fodder, and the lavish production values courtesy of Dante Ferretti and Sandy Powell.
The latter is back to Disney's mercenary recycling scheme with Snow White, a project that harkens back to Cinderella without reaching the same modest heights. Sandy Powell innocent, though. Well, mostly…
Released in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was both a proof of concept for the Walt Disney Studios and the culmination of American animation up to that point in film history. It's remarkable how well it holds up, its artistic merits as evident today as they were 88 years ago, craftsmanship so mind-boggling it still inspired awe in whoever looks upon the film. In other words, Disney's first Snow White feature adaptation remains a testament to the glory of animation as a medium in itself, not a limited facsimile of live-action. One wonders if the directors Disney keeps hiring to shepherd their remakes have the same respect for animated pictures. Looking at the past decade and a half of misbegotten redundancy… I think not.
That said, by virtue of Erin Cressida Wilson's script and its deviations from the '37 classic, director Marc Webb isn't beholden to going the shot-by-shot remake route for Snow White. Thank heavens, for that would be a recipe for disaster. And even in moments where such an approach could be justified, he eschews the copy-paste mania, evoking the original images without reproducing them outright. The worst instances, those that came closer to puerile Xeroxing, center Gal Gadot's Evil Queen. Then again, most of the movie's biggest issues concern the villain, starting with the actress' catastrophic performance and continuing on to the piss-poor original song Pasek and Paul devised for a character that was fine without a signature tune. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First things first, Snow White finetunes its heroine's origin story to avoid some racist nitpicking about leading lady Rachel Zegler not being as white as the whitest snow. Instead, the princess of some unnamed kingdom in some unspecified past era is thus named for being born during a storm, braving the harsh winter like a ray of hope bursting into the world. She and her kingly parents' idyllic life comes to us in a musical number laden with wishing well imagery and many apple pies to sweeten the deal. It's saccharine to an excessive degree, yet the tonal lightness makes sense as a prelude to the villain's arrival, right after the queen's death with magical gifts to offer. Only her powers are directly tied to her status as fairest of them all, underlining vanity with a new urgency.
It's the same old tale, with the king disappearing far away and the new queen taking over the throne. Gone are the pies and merriment, the golden sun succumbed to the cold gray light of a CGI-ed sky. The princess is relegated to servitude under her stepmother, an old childhood dress grown too tight, hair chopped to signal the transformation of crown heir into pauper. As much as these early Sandy Powell costumes avoid copying the 1937 designs, overcompensating with lots of plaid, the coiffure is loyal to the character design of yore, justified with this symbolic gesture. Sadly, the costume designer loses that boldness when it comes to the star's primary costume and its blinding bright color scheme. In summation, a push-and-pull of nostalgic fealty, needless lore expansion, and theme park-like kitsch.
We've seen this song and dance before with the other Disney live-action remakes, but I'm glad to report the impulse for originality is a bit stronger this time around. It doesn't always produce good results, but it feels less redundant than otherwise. Consider the prince, now named Jonathan and made a former actor turned monarchist bandit who crosses Snow White's path, not as a noble savior, but as a freedom fighter à la Robin Hood, stealing from the castle's pantry to feed the dispossessed. He's much more present as his team of ex-performers, now outlaws fighting against oppression. Yes, this Snow White is about bringing power to the people, but also about reinstating the rightful bloodline to the throne – it doesn't make sense. And it doesn't need to, not really.
Other notable changes include the dwarfs, now fully fantastical beings who use magical abilities to illuminate the treasures hiding within the bedrock of their mine. While the change is well-intentioned, the textual devices feel forced. Moreover, the visual execution is downright nightmare fuel. In an effort to not exoticize a marginalized community, the filmmakers didn't cast little people, glomming the faces of average-height actors into CGI abominations that are far too proportionally cartoonish to function in the photorealist milieu. Weightless and fundamentally immaterial, even when interacting with other digital elements, their presence is uncanny, sabotaging whatever emotional response the story might impose on them. Dopey's friendship with the princess comes closest, even with some troubling act three resolutions.
And yet, it's not enough. That could be said for a lot of Snow White. Mandy Walker tries her best with the cinematography, but the prevalent style of Disney remakes and effects overdrive limit what the DP can do. One loves the commitment to saturated hues even when they're more messy than marvelous. Webber has little flair for compelling compositions, creating various frames that are vibrant for what they depict but not for how they do it. The music is pleasantly modernized, reaching its zenith with an epic take on "Heigh-Ho," but most of the original songs are too unmemorable. Only Snow White's "I Want" song registers, in part because it's so emphatically repeated as a leitmotif. In part because Rachel Zegler sings her heart out at every chance she gets.
Indeed, she's the movie's most successful element, give or take the surprisingly expressive sound design. Sincere but not irritatingly simple, the actress delivers a fairytale heroine whose bleeding heart is always worn on her blue brocade sleeve, transparent and clear-eyed. Basically, Zegler succeeds at playing a cartoon without turning her characterization into a metatextual exercise in princess movie tropes. There's no irony there, of course, which means the humor, when it comes, flops like a dying fish on land. Nevertheless, that intermittent failure has nothing on what Gal Gadot's serving. Like Zegler, she's trying to play the Evil Queen like a cartoon come to life, but her skillset is insufficient.
The picture's leading lady and Tony-award winner Andrew Burnap as Jonathan are equipped to handle the musical stylizations of the Snow White Webb has devised. Even when playing poorly constructed numbers ("Princess Problems"), they enrich the material with solid performances. Gadot can't sing the part, and neither can she tap into the overt artifice her physicality hints at, nor the 1930s Old Hollywood vamp realness Powell's sequined costumes – all color variations on the same template like an animated model – insist upon. To this day, Gadot has only excelled in the first Wonder Woman, where she could play it straight, full-throttle earnest to the point of endearing awkwardness, switching into soldier-like righteousness when needed. It was a rightful star-making turn, but it also showcased the thespian's limits. In other words, her screen presence is the opposite of a campy villainess modeled after Gale Sondergaard.
I'm not surprised at Gadot's movie-collapsing failure, but I can't entirely blame her either. This is, first and foremost, a casting issue that feels like the consequence of wanting someone that looked the part rather than someone who could do it justice. Even her old hag makeup is half-assed, and the new finale hinges too much on the conflict between the two women in a clear attempt at making the princess a more active character in the same fashion as Cinderella's 2015 upgrade. All this means that Snow White comes apart the closest it comes to the end credits, a sad fate for any movie but especially bad for a tale so predicated on the joy of a storybook happy ending. Oh well, rather than a crime against art, Snow White is merely a mediocre movie. Still, it could be worse. Remember Zemeckis' Pinocchio?
Are you going to check out the new Snow White, or have you tapped out of the Disney live-action remake industrial complex?