Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Live-Action)

[Randall]

Those people pictured weren’t playing the dwarfs. Or dwarf characters. They are a band of thieves because this movie is also a Robin Hood remake for some reason. So the dwarfs (CGI or otherwise) were never being “replaced.”

One reviewer floated the theory that those were intended to replace the dwarves, until rewrites ended up creating two films in one. He was maybe half-joking, but said the film ended up feeling that way. (I haven't seen it myself to judge.)

[Dacey]

I feel there are too many scenes where the dwarfs (or whatever they are) interact with them for that to have been the case? The dwarfs are in almost every scene the thieves are in. And the thieves aren't in it much.

It's weird to say, but the CGI dwarfs (who are mythical creatures who are centuries old, so again, Disney didn't need to do them in CGI, but I digress) are...kind of a highlight? The movie is usually at its best when they're around, as insane as that sounds. They still earn some laughs as they are funny characters, and Heigh-Ho and Whistle While You Work get appropriately toe-tapping treatment here.

Having said that...

SPOILER!!! (I guess)

Dopey talks.

[Ben]

I’d already "heard" that…and then I cringed at how they use that.

[gaastra]

Not even the first time disney did that. Go watch the disney special snow white live from the 80s. Did that decades before this movie!

[Ben]

Surely this new one, in trying to cover why her skin isn’t white as snow with a really lame alternative reason for her name, should just be called White Snow? After all, it is…

ECHO, ECHO, ECHO, ECHO…

[Dacey]

She’s called “Snow White” because she was born in the winter snow. Not really that big of a deal?

And I really thought the “echo” song (where I didn’t even notice her singing that word so much) was alright?

[Farerb]

It's just a bit weird to name your child after the thing that almost got them killed.

[Ben]

Exactly Dace.

Winter snow = white snow.

You wouldn’t say she was born in the snow winter, right?

Hence White Snow is the more appropriate new title, to go with the new reason.

— Sonny Day

[James]

Box Office Upset: Blue-Collar Drama ‘A Working Man’ Beats Snow White With $15M Opening

"The dismal performance of Snow White in its second weekend is more bad news for Disney and puts the live-action pic in official bomb territory after falling off a steep 66 percent."

Even crazier? Snow White was playing in 1,000 more locations than A Working Man!

[Ben]

I guess he’s really working!!

[Farerb]

With the Tangled remake cancelled, it means that this was indeed Disney's last fairytale film. Doesn't it make any of you sad ?

[Ben]

I didn’t think you liked any of these live remakes anyway??

Either way, Tangled isn’t cancelled, it’s just "paused", and Lilo & Stitch and Moana's massive takes will make them realise White Snow was just a bad idea to begin with and the cycle will be reignited.

And there are plenty of other fairytale films that will come from Disney, live, animated or otherwise.

[Farerb]

I don't like them but Disney stopped caring about adapting fairytales for animation. All we're going to get are more Frozens, more Moanas or movies like Wish.The last fairytale they adapted when you really think about it was Rapunzel.

[Ben]

So...Snow White...

Hmmm...so, yeah, I'm gonna say it: the first half hour I was kind of...liking! Well, that's a bit strong, but it was harmless enough and if you're going to do a Disney Snow White for now then this is how it would be done. But then the sets are bad: everything feels mega-fake. Grass is...what, exactly? It isn't grass! The "metal" and "wood" on the gates looks like fabricated moulded plastic, which is probably what it is. Let's just say that everything is "heightened", including the cookie-cutter backstory and loss of Snow's parents, as Disney and cliche as it comes. I didn't even kind of mind the opening songs, such as they are.

But then, pretty quickly it starts to fall away. Already we've had a lot of lacklustre direction, but then the performances are also just as one note. The Huntsman is an awful actor and that scene doesn't play well in any way. Things suddenly become rushed and happen just because they do. Gal is fine in her first few scenes. Wicked Queen is gonna Wicked Queen. But then she gets her own villain song and, while it's not bad, she doesn't know how to act it, or isn't being given direction, so overplays it as a ham and it also fails.

The "prince" (wait, is he even a prince?) does all the princey things you expect, so whatever happened to Snow being the pro-active one? She's just a passive as in the original: makes the dwarfs clean up while she just sings and dances, eats the apple, waits for Princey to show up and kiss her...it's all the same!? Okay, so she stands up to the Queen, but Queenie gets her own comeuppance in a different way that has no emotional payoff for anyone or anything we've seen before or has been set up. It's a lazy script, lazily directed, with lazy effects. The "bandits", or whatever they are, serve no purpose. One is a dwarf anyway!? They turn up and go away again, pointlessly.

The actual dwarfs did amuse, but not for the intended reasons: Doc, Grumpy and Dopey aside, they all look the same - I defy anyone, at anytime, to pause and tell me which is which other than Doc, played by Alan Menken, Grumpy (Oliver Stone, or at least Powers Boothe), and Dopey (I'm still placing him, but he reminds me of someone), who spoils his big surprise a little too early when it would have been better saved for when it's repeated at the end. Indeed, I was half expecting the "prince" kiss not to work, and for it to be Dopey's true love that saves Snowy, since he has the biggest build up in relationship with her throughout and I thought that would have been a more interesting and surprising line to take. I'm not suggesting that they get intimate, but love is love; it doesn't have to be physical.

Heigh-Ho is trashed, with the dwarfs going off to work and back home again in the space of the song - wait, what? - that takes place in a HUGE mine under what must be the entire kingdom - and the Queen, for all her love of jewels, seemingly has no idea about it!? And why does she take the form of the old woman to track down Snowy when, once she knows where she is, she could just send her guards? And what's the story about the guards!? Are they under a spell? Did she enchant the whole town/kingdom/world!? What is the point of the old woman disguise again? Couldn't everything have been better thought out and done?

In the end, Snow White is just kind of "there". It opens fine but then just drops off into cliche and obvious pitfalls. It's also all so made by committee that every moment is signposted as it's coming up. Is she gonna...is she gonna...yes, of course she's going to sing another reprise. Natch. There are several moments that could have been so much better and...shhh...even almost saved this from just being so bland, but a lot of it is just laughable. In fact, we did, out loud a couple of times. But there ya go. Didn't need to be made, and shouldn't have been touched, and they messed it up. Next!