PG-13, 2 hr. 7 min. Directed By:
Rupert Sanders.
Release Date: Jun 1, 2012.
I want to know two things about the
casting of Snow White and the Hunstman: the first is in which world in the
Bizzaroverse would anyone, ever, think Kristen Steweart was hotter than
Charlize Theron and the second is who thought casting Mopey the Dwarf as Snow
White was going to be a good idea. While
the first is improbable, as Ms. Theron would win the “hot or not” contest on
the first day of her period, dressed in tacky rags, as I believe the line from She’s All That goes. But, if you make Snow White sufficiently emo,
and empower her in a way that when she says “I’m special and tortured,” people
actually believe her, ole Mopey isn’t such a bad choice. And no, I can’t believe I’m saying she
shouldn’t be executed, either.
Going through this, I thought
Charlize Theron was awesome, although clearly not putting a whole lot of effort
into the game, and Bob Hoskins helped carry the middle 40 minutes of the movie,
playing the dwarf with sight beyond sight, or whatever you might want to call
it. The rest of the cast was varying
degrees of abysmal. The real star of
this show was the special effects, although it wasn’t anything we haven’t seen
before. When you do something simple, or
something that isn’t terribly unique, the least you can do is make those things
well done. And SWATH manages to do those effects very neatly.
I wasn’t so sold on the mythos or
story line, mostly because it appeared that they cobbled together the basic
Snow White fairy tale and merged it with just about every other sword and
sorcery movie ever created. It’s also
just as clear that some portions of the movie were seriously inspired by the
Disney classic animated version of this same tale. I had concerns about the scenes where
Charlize Theron cries out a single tear.
Not because the evil queen was crying, but because I couldn’t figure out
why she was shedding a tear in any of the occasions but the last.
While I loved Charlize Theron, I
didn’t love her character, the problem being a design flaw: I wasn’t supposed to love her, but she felt
unfinished. I wanted to know WHY the
evil queen was evil. There are dark
hints that she, like my most recent ex-girlfriend, was simply a psycho
hose-beast. But, until the very last
third of the movie, I don’t understand what her motivation, and even once we
learn (a VAGUE outline of the problem) I want more details, because the events
we see could have ended with something positive, but they clearly didn’t.
SWATH isn’t without problems:
two of its three headliners are terrible, although I’m pretty convinced
that the two bad ones will only have short futures in Hollywood. The story drags through the “chase” component
of the movie, and the mythos is a strange conglomeration of fantasy
archetypes. But, if you’re going to
compare it to the OTHER Snow
White knock-off this year, SWATH wins
on all counts. I didn’t go in with any
expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I also forgot to mention that I was kind of impressed SPECIFICALLY with
the effects that made believable dwarves out of folks who weren’t, well, little
people.
On a meaner note, I'm pretty sure this variant of the evil queen's crown was supposed to prove that she had already conquered the kingdom of Las Vegas... or Cher was originally supposed to be the queen.
