REVIEW: Snow White - roundly slated but really really not that bad!

It’s difficult to think of another film in recent years which has attracted such negative pre-release publicity. And now it’s out, such damning reviews.

Which is odd really. Because the film really, really isn’t that bad. It’s perfectly watchable and undemandingly enjoyable. Yes, it’s a little irritating at times, but the message is sweet and a good one, and the updating is certainly within the bounds of reason.

It’s an age-old tale, and ages changes. Director Marc Webb has given the story a wokeness it never had, but he’s not gone too far and was probably never going to win whatever he did with the dwarves. He has dropped them from the title and, in replacing them with computer wizardry, has attracted accusations of reducing dwarves to the status of mythical creatures and denying real-life little people work. And he’s probably guilty on both counts – though presumably he’d argue that using real people with dwarfism would have been exploitative.

He is on firmer ground with his replacement of the Prince with a curious Robin Hood-type character Jonathan who trots out the film’s best line when he introduces himself to the Princess. He’s hardly a committed revolutionary with his rag-tag band, but somehow the character seems to get it right and he comes up trumps in the end.

Gal Gadot’s cardboard cutout Evil Queen is probably the film’s weakest element. And yes, she’s fairly annoying. But opposite her Rachel Zegler acquits herself nicely as our Snow White. Again, there’s updating. She is Snow White not because of her skin colour, but because she was born in a blizzard. But again, perhaps, fair enough.

Besides, judge her by the performance, and in that respect she’s a winner, spirited and engaging, a decent Princess for our more modern times. Interesting that Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm are still credited as the writers alongside Erin Cressida Wilson; it’s difficult to think that they would object that much.