The trailer’s for this movie looked awful, and Snow White and the Huntsman seems like it will be much better. Okay, so right off the bat I should tell you that this movie is NOT awful…that’s the good news. The bad news is that it is no better than a C and completely forgettable/disposable/you can more than live without seeing it.
What Works: I like the direction of this movie more than anything else. Some readers will remember Tarsem Singh’s last major film (The Cell) and all of the hellish, wild visuals it conjured up and I’m glad to say that there are a handful of scenes here that look inspired by his style. The opening animation is terrific, the dwarfs accordion legs, the giant puppets that crash into their hideout, etc. Anytime there is some cosmic, original weirdness going on, the movie works…
What Doesn’t Work: Unfortunately, those sequences are few and far between. For every sequence that bristles with energy, there are five that just lie there. Another problem is the casting isn’t so great. Lilly Collins is sweet as apple pie as Snow White, but she’s not so great at projecting anything besides virginal purity. Armie Hammer is always the right actor to cast as an uber-WASP jackass, but I’m not sure how much more of a career this guy should have. [There are plenty of guys that can get cast as Disney princes and Har-vard frat boys…not to mention it’s not much of a stretch for Hammer to play that since he is a preppy heir in real life.] And Julia Roberts really wastes her first villainous role by making it more campy than chilling. All and all I would say this movie is better than its trailers suggest, but still not a good film.
What I Would Have Done Differently: It’s time for Julia Roberts to play a villain. And not a harmless villain in a cutesy kid flick, but a real one. She needs to remember the electric energy of when Denzel Washington embraced his inner villain in Training Day, and really explore her darker impulses too.