Arts & Culture

Snow White
Where: In theatres
What: Movie, 109 mins.
When: Fri., March 21
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why You Should Watch: Determined to make a modern, less problematic, take on an animated classic, Disney does a decent job with this live-action Snow White.

GIVE DISNEY CREDIT for perseverance or maybe it’s just a profound sense of bottom-line potential of endlessly re-harvesting its own catalogue for film, musicals and theme park fodder, but the studio is releasing its latest re-adaptation of a classic animated feature. The 1937 animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is this week’s decent live-action remake, Snow White, that tries extremely hard not to offend.

We recently learned that even casting fictional characters like mermaids can lead to a shitstorm of outrage from conservative crackpots as the violent reaction to Halle Bailey as the lead in the live-action The Little Mermaid demonstrated. Disney’s decision to cast Rachel Zegler, the Latina star of the recent West Side Story reboot, has met with similarly angry responses from those who clearly want their Snow White to be white.

And Zegler is awesome in this decent remake, even enchanting, as the kind-hearted heroine who is determined that no dude, Prince Charming or otherwise, is needed to save her from the many perils she faces. Disney does all it can to reflect more modern sensibilities, and it’s not hard to be amused as boxes are checked and female affirmation is declared with relentless regularity.

It’s a semi-musical with characters occasionally but not routinely breaking out in song, including a massive, euphoric opening number showing the idyllic kingdom before it all goes bad, Good Things Grow, a decent new tune with a chorus that sounds like an old Ontario Foodland marketing message.

Zegler shows her chops and her determination not to be anybody’s damsel in distress with Waiting on a Wish, the kind of track they’ll be leaping to their feet to cheer in the inevitable Broadway version of this film. There is, however, no room for Some Day My Prince Will Come from the original film in this new version. Though it’s referenced instrumentally, it is never sung. The crowd-pleasing classic Heigh Ho happily does stay in the picture, delightfully sung by the animated versions of the seven dwarfs who, in this film are still called dwarfs despite efforts to be more woke.

We don’t get a Special Needs Dopey, this time out, just plain ole wordless Dopey and the little fellas, all seven of them, do provide refuge and comic relief as in the original. Scenes in their deep-woods hideaway are colour-saturated eyefuls of fun.

Like many Disney films, especially of the earlier era, Snow White is too intense for little kids, maybe a nine-year-old cut-off; other ones will be scared shitless almost right off the top. Despite gorgeously cuddly creatures and a jewel-bedazzled storybook to open the film followed by the idyllic before times, when Snow White’s family ruled the kingdom, things go really dark really fast, much more so than most little ones would be able to handle.

It’s no spoiler to mention that parental units in this generation of Disney stories are like drummers in Spinal Tap: they are doomed from the start and Snow White’s parental units are dispatched early in the film. An evil stepmother from a sinister “foreign land” — missed a few spots in the sanitization, eh Disney? — takes over in a demonic role that could have been played by Lady Gaga but is performed by Gal Gadot. Gadot will be easy to believe as the Evil Queen for modern viewers since real Gadot is Hollywood’s most outspoken voice in favour of the genocide in Gaza as she staunchly defends Israel. And in this role, it works: she doesn’t play things Lucretia McEvilly campy bad, she is full-on evil and, therefore, scary as shit for kids.

Would-be bandit and reluctant revolutionary Jonathon (Andrew Burnap) is the male foil and eventual sweetheart for Snow White, becoming her ally but NOT her saviour as she flees the Evil Queen and hides among the dwarfs and adorable woodland creatures.

Snow White is a gorgeous blend of live action and animation that takes full advantage of a rich and rewarding colour pallet. The animation is great, the new songs are exactly what you’d expect — bombastic and mostly forgettable with a few musical gems from the past nicely polished and refreshed here. Zegler is impressive as Snow White, and the efforts to modernize sensibilities are largely effective and not clumsy in this enjoyable remake.