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Before we get into the movie, here's a brief history lesson for anyone reading this who wasn't paying attention in the early half of the 2020s.
As the 2020 Covid pandemic was beginning to slack off, Disney decided to start putting movies in theaters again, but at the same time, they decided to go all in on pushing their inclusivity agenda. That meant gay characters in cartoons meant for general audiences, basically. At the same time, coincidentally, they released some of the weakest movies they've ever released. (Lightyear, Strange World, Onward, etc.)
Of course Mr and Mrs Middle America didn't go for much of this. Why take the kids out to a Disney movie if it was not much good, and on top of that, it was going to be pushing ideals that are outside of the mainstream? And on top of THAT, they put the damn movies on Disney Plus within a few weeks anyway, so why bother going to the theaters at all?
All of the above happened smack in the middle of their program of reinventing Disney from an innovative storytelling company into the biggest remake machine in Hollywood, tasked with making "this generation's" version of their animated classics. For the record, some of those have been pretty good, and a couple have been excellent ("The Jungle Book," "Cinderella") and some have sucked ("Dumbo"). It only stood to reason they would eventually get to the grandaddy of them all, Snow White (and the Seven Dwarfs, NOT "DWARVES." I'm talking to every single media outlet out there. Stop with the "dwarves.")
So after releasing half a dozen movies that tanked, and looking at their shrinking bottom line, Disney finally saw the error of its ways: Why piss off a good half of your audience by pushing so much "message" into the movies, they said. Our job is to entertain people! So they kicked out CEO Bob Chepak, and brought in Bob Iger (who had sheperded the company through some of its most lucrative years ever) to right the ship. They even resumed their old theatrical window of 90-100 days before flushing their movies to home video.
But there was still a Chepak-era project in the works, that being the subject of this review. Disney probably wishes they could go back to square one on this movie, because it has been the most stupidly-marketed project they've done in the last ten years.
First, they irritated the legions of fans of the original movie because they announced that the Seven Dwarfs (not Dwarves) would not be in the title, and the seven beings in the movie wuold not be dwarfs at all, but "magical creatures." That meant they could be tall, short, any color of the rainbow, and any binary or otherwise gender identity too, I don't know. Anyway, this outraged a lot of people, both mainstream and otherwise. So Disney backtracked and said the dwarfs (oops, "magical creatures") would be rendered in CGI, and would look similar to the characters in the original 1937 movie. So this outraged, you guessed it, the little-people community, who argued that they were taking roles away from members of that community.
Then Russia attacked Ukraine, and October 7 happened, and Disney just happened to have two leading ladies in Snow White that fall on opposite sides of the politics of that situation, and they got into the proverbial "war of words" in the media.* And, the main leading lady (Rachel Zegler), on top of everything else, is an avowed feminist, and talked a lot about how stupid the original movie was, how you don't need a prince here in 2025, and other similar words that did everything but make people want to see the new movie.
All of this ignited a furor on social media which was bigger than any of the controversy generated by Disney's other recent movies. Sentiments ranged everywhere from "burn Disney to the ground" to "thank heavens they are finally letting Snow White be her own damn woman." But the most common sentiment I saw was "why did they make this movie anyway?" Truly, it (along with all the other remakes, if we're being honest with ourselves) was the movie nobody was asking for.
So, after everybody in the world has expressed their opinion on this movie before actually seeing it, we finally have the movie in front of us. The question: Is it any good?
The short answer is, it's not a train wreck. It's not as good as the original animated film, in my view, because it doesn't have the snappy pace of that movie, and the little CGI magical dwarf people/creatures are, sad to say, kind of creepy. The climactic scene in which the evil queen is defeated is far, FAR less thrilling than the 1937 animated movie was. Walt Disney, if he was around today, would have said "Try again, boys" on it.
In this movie, of course, Snow White is no longer a dainty, helpless girl who is wishing, wishing, for the one she loves. She's a kickass, standalone modern young woman who will take no crap from anybody, no matter if it's a mouthy "bandit" (no prince here), a wicked stepmom/queen, or a bunch of mildly creepy little old men. In other words, she's cut from the same clpth as every Disney princess since Elsa. Rachel Zegler does a nice job as Snow White, and has a very nice singing voice. Gal Godot is less convincing as the evil queen. To their credit, the filmmakers give the (eventual) prince a little more of a role in this movie than in the original, but he still feels like a tacked-on character whose only real purpose is to administer "true love's kiss" at the end.
The story is changed quite a bit from the original movie, but not in any outlandish ways. The movie goes to great lengths to redefine the word "fair" to make it more about power and influence, and less about beauty, and the prince from the original story is reduced to basically a street thug with a heart of gold who marries well. Other than that, there aren't as many nods to 2025 culture as one might expect.
Visually, the movie is gorgeous. The backgrounds and sets are spot-on. All of Snow White's animal friends are well-animated, but still don't quite capture real animal-like movements. It's close, but it's not quite there yet.
Some, but not all, of the songs from the old movie are preserved. ("Someday My Prince Will Come" is unsurprisingly absent.) There are also a handful of new songs, which are uniformly pleasant, but bland compared to the oldies. When we got home from watching the movie, I still had "Whistle While You Work" and "Heigh Ho" running through my head, but I could not remember a single one of the new songs.
I thought the sound mix was OK but not out of the ordinary.
Overall? I'll give it a two out of five. I hoped to be wowed with how good it was, but it mainly left me with a desire to watch the old one again. I haven't seen it in about 30 years or more.
* I haven't followed the situation that closely, so my specifics might be a little off, but it's close enough for the purposes of this review.)
As the 2020 Covid pandemic was beginning to slack off, Disney decided to start putting movies in theaters again, but at the same time, they decided to go all in on pushing their inclusivity agenda. That meant gay characters in cartoons meant for general audiences, basically. At the same time, coincidentally, they released some of the weakest movies they've ever released. (Lightyear, Strange World, Onward, etc.)
Of course Mr and Mrs Middle America didn't go for much of this. Why take the kids out to a Disney movie if it was not much good, and on top of that, it was going to be pushing ideals that are outside of the mainstream? And on top of THAT, they put the damn movies on Disney Plus within a few weeks anyway, so why bother going to the theaters at all?
All of the above happened smack in the middle of their program of reinventing Disney from an innovative storytelling company into the biggest remake machine in Hollywood, tasked with making "this generation's" version of their animated classics. For the record, some of those have been pretty good, and a couple have been excellent ("The Jungle Book," "Cinderella") and some have sucked ("Dumbo"). It only stood to reason they would eventually get to the grandaddy of them all, Snow White (and the Seven Dwarfs, NOT "DWARVES." I'm talking to every single media outlet out there. Stop with the "dwarves.")
So after releasing half a dozen movies that tanked, and looking at their shrinking bottom line, Disney finally saw the error of its ways: Why piss off a good half of your audience by pushing so much "message" into the movies, they said. Our job is to entertain people! So they kicked out CEO Bob Chepak, and brought in Bob Iger (who had sheperded the company through some of its most lucrative years ever) to right the ship. They even resumed their old theatrical window of 90-100 days before flushing their movies to home video.
But there was still a Chepak-era project in the works, that being the subject of this review. Disney probably wishes they could go back to square one on this movie, because it has been the most stupidly-marketed project they've done in the last ten years.
First, they irritated the legions of fans of the original movie because they announced that the Seven Dwarfs (not Dwarves) would not be in the title, and the seven beings in the movie wuold not be dwarfs at all, but "magical creatures." That meant they could be tall, short, any color of the rainbow, and any binary or otherwise gender identity too, I don't know. Anyway, this outraged a lot of people, both mainstream and otherwise. So Disney backtracked and said the dwarfs (oops, "magical creatures") would be rendered in CGI, and would look similar to the characters in the original 1937 movie. So this outraged, you guessed it, the little-people community, who argued that they were taking roles away from members of that community.
Then Russia attacked Ukraine, and October 7 happened, and Disney just happened to have two leading ladies in Snow White that fall on opposite sides of the politics of that situation, and they got into the proverbial "war of words" in the media.* And, the main leading lady (Rachel Zegler), on top of everything else, is an avowed feminist, and talked a lot about how stupid the original movie was, how you don't need a prince here in 2025, and other similar words that did everything but make people want to see the new movie.
All of this ignited a furor on social media which was bigger than any of the controversy generated by Disney's other recent movies. Sentiments ranged everywhere from "burn Disney to the ground" to "thank heavens they are finally letting Snow White be her own damn woman." But the most common sentiment I saw was "why did they make this movie anyway?" Truly, it (along with all the other remakes, if we're being honest with ourselves) was the movie nobody was asking for.
So, after everybody in the world has expressed their opinion on this movie before actually seeing it, we finally have the movie in front of us. The question: Is it any good?
The short answer is, it's not a train wreck. It's not as good as the original animated film, in my view, because it doesn't have the snappy pace of that movie, and the little CGI magical dwarf people/creatures are, sad to say, kind of creepy. The climactic scene in which the evil queen is defeated is far, FAR less thrilling than the 1937 animated movie was. Walt Disney, if he was around today, would have said "Try again, boys" on it.
In this movie, of course, Snow White is no longer a dainty, helpless girl who is wishing, wishing, for the one she loves. She's a kickass, standalone modern young woman who will take no crap from anybody, no matter if it's a mouthy "bandit" (no prince here), a wicked stepmom/queen, or a bunch of mildly creepy little old men. In other words, she's cut from the same clpth as every Disney princess since Elsa. Rachel Zegler does a nice job as Snow White, and has a very nice singing voice. Gal Godot is less convincing as the evil queen. To their credit, the filmmakers give the (eventual) prince a little more of a role in this movie than in the original, but he still feels like a tacked-on character whose only real purpose is to administer "true love's kiss" at the end.
The story is changed quite a bit from the original movie, but not in any outlandish ways. The movie goes to great lengths to redefine the word "fair" to make it more about power and influence, and less about beauty, and the prince from the original story is reduced to basically a street thug with a heart of gold who marries well. Other than that, there aren't as many nods to 2025 culture as one might expect.
Visually, the movie is gorgeous. The backgrounds and sets are spot-on. All of Snow White's animal friends are well-animated, but still don't quite capture real animal-like movements. It's close, but it's not quite there yet.
Some, but not all, of the songs from the old movie are preserved. ("Someday My Prince Will Come" is unsurprisingly absent.) There are also a handful of new songs, which are uniformly pleasant, but bland compared to the oldies. When we got home from watching the movie, I still had "Whistle While You Work" and "Heigh Ho" running through my head, but I could not remember a single one of the new songs.
I thought the sound mix was OK but not out of the ordinary.
Overall? I'll give it a two out of five. I hoped to be wowed with how good it was, but it mainly left me with a desire to watch the old one again. I haven't seen it in about 30 years or more.
* I haven't followed the situation that closely, so my specifics might be a little off, but it's close enough for the purposes of this review.)
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