Rushfield Babylon

MOVIES IN REVIEW: SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN. 
DWARF SPEED AHEAD! 

Much more frustrating than a movie that’s just bad is a movie that’s almost really good, that has so many good elements by all rights it should be really good, but just falls short. All through Snow White, one feels like it’s just on the verge of breaking through from being something slightly cold and a bit perfunctory into becoming a truly unique epic, but it just never quite gets you there and somehow, despite largely being with it for most of the time, I left feeling kind of defeated like all my hard work staying with the belabored  story was never quite rewarded.

As you’ve seen in the trailers, the film looks great.  But in fact, most of what looks great about it you’ve already seen in the trailers.  The best visual tricks you likely know by heart now, so for a film that rests so heavily on its visuals, its akin to a comedy where all the best jokes are in the trailer.  Given that, there is almost an argument to be made that instead of seeing the film, you can save your money and just watch the trailer a few more times and not leave feeling guilty for eating a whole tub of popcorn.

If you go to see it, you get Charlize being angry and Kristen Stewart being wistful, both in costume.  Either of which I suppose is worth the ticket price.  But while Charlize’s psycho Queen routine is enjoyable, ultimately  it feels just too contrived and contained and predictable.  She never seems to really be able to take it to the kind of weird truly nutty place that we know from Young Adult she is capable of taking us to.  Kristen Stewart I am now ready to declare her the Number Two actress of her generation (list to follow).  The producers of this film are damn lucky that they got her for this part because as scripted, she doesn’t really have anything to do except pet horses and stand amazed with her mouth hanging open while people point at her and say, she’s the one.  But damnit, Stewart is such a walking ball of conflicted emo energy that she can do that and make it feel like there’s a real character there.  (The only other young actress who could have pulled that off is the only one above her on the list and her name starts with Kiki).

So much of the movie feels incomplete in that way.  They did the work of turning the fairy tale for children into an adventure for teenagers, but they couldn’t take it the rest of the way and turn it into something for adults.

But most important - Iooking back on the film 28 hours after seeing it, I can’t help but feel we were shortchanged on the dwarves.  However much screen time they may have gotten in earlier versions, the seven dwarves were the true stars of any rendition.  But here, not only do we have to wait until an hour into the movie, the dwarves are completely cranky-little-people-by-the-number and feel lifted from the LOTR movies.  I understand, sort of, that if you want to make this a realistic/fantasy film (that new genre) you can’t have a character named Sneezy.  But on the other hand, I can’t get over that we’re watching Snow White and there’s not a character named Sneezy.  You’ve got the best monikered buddy team in fairy tale history and if you’re going to throw that away, you better have something good to replace it with, which this film doesn’t. 

Also, I’m sorry to go in this direction, but it’s what I couldn’t stop thinking about during the film.  The dwarves are all played by great actors, with Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins et al’s heads superimposed onto dwarvish bodies.  The problem with this - besides that it was damn distracting trying to spot the effects work - is that in the LOTR movies, it’s perfectly fair and fine to superimpose Andy Serkis’ head onto Gollum body, because there aren’t a lot of golem SAG members out there, so that’s what you got to do.  But as we know from TLC, there are in fact little people on this planet. Some of whom are seeking out careers as working actors.  It’s always great to see Bob Hoskins in a film, but in the end how is having him play a little person through the magic of visual effects any different than having a white actor play an African American part in blackface and take a part away from a black actor?   They couldn’t even give one of the dwarf roles to an actual little person?

Also, I might have missed something but there’s some confusion about the number of dwarves.  Don’t want to give anything away, but towards the end of the film try and get a head count and see what I mean.  The mythological version is very clear on the proper quantity of dwarves in Snow White.

All in all, I enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as I almost kinda felt like I could have.

The Rushfield Babylon Recommendation:  Six stars out of ten.