Brief Story Line
Snow White (Rachel Zegler - Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes etc) was a princess who lost her parents since she was young. Meanwhile her step mother, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot - Heart of Stone, Wonder Woman etc) was obsessed of being the fairest of all by constantly checking on the Magic Mirror (voiced by Patrick Page - Spirited, The Gilded Age TV series etc). Fearing that Snow White would trouble her in the future, the Queen confined her in the palace and turned her into the maid. One day, Snow White met and sympathized with a thief/rebel named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap - The Front Room, Under the Banner of Heaven mini series etc) who was eager to defy the Queen. After the Evil Queen was told by the Mirror that she was no longer the fairest, she decided to kill Snow White and instructed the Huntsman (Ansu Kabia - Miss Scarlet and The Duke TV series etc) to do so.
Due to some reasons, Snow White was not killed and escaped to a small house and stayed for the night. Apparently the house was owned by seven dwarfs consisting of Doc (voiced by Jeremy Swift - Ted Lasso TV series etc), Bashful (Tituss Burgess - Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt TV series etc), Grumpy (Martin Klebba - Pirates of the Caribbean movies etc), Happy (George Salazar - Impeachment: American Crime Story anthology series etc), Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen), Sneezy (Jason Kravits - The Practice TV series etc) and Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman - No Hard Feelings etc) who finally decided to let Snow White continue staying there while avoiding capture by Evil Queen. But the Queen was determined to kill her and used all possible means to do it.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
So this movie had been bothered by many controversies and I guess it made general audience had some reservations or even prejudice against it. Which is why I did not see too much enthusiasm on this as opposed to other Disney's live version adaptation of their animated classics. Regardless though, my wife and I were still interested in seeing the movie and disregard outside comments. And it turned out that we were still able to enjoy the film.
Now I had not seen the complete original movie and only caught glimpses of its classic scenes in the past but in general I knew the main plot. This new adaptation still had the main plots like Queen's jealousy, Snow White's pureness and her friendship with the Dwarfs and the Magic Mirror element. However, there was a significant change of the character Jonathan who I found out later was a new one created for the film. He was not a Prince like in the original and it also explained the reason why one of the classic song that my wife loved title "Someday My Prince Will Come" was not sung here but only the instrumental version (which she did not catch). I think there might be few different changes to make the film a bit more relevant to the current condition which I did not notice.
The songs here in general were actually pretty nice. My wife enjoyed them while I also felt they were quite likable such as the new duet song titled "A Hand Meets A Hand". That song and other new songs were written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul experienced in writing songs for films like La La Land, The Greatest Showman, Aladdin and many others. Of course the original songs were available in here as well, like "Whistle While You Work" and our personal favorite, the very catchy "Heigh-ho". My wife also admired the singing ability of Rachel Zegler and she was also OK with the others including Gal Gadot. For me personally though, even if the songs were nice, I still thought the singing were a little too much (it has always been a challenge for me to fully enjoy a musical).
Anyway aside from the classic plot, I thought the visual effects were very good. The motion capture of the dwarfs were nicely done and the animals were life-like. The duration was not too long, only 109 minutes including closing credits. There was no mid or post end credit scene here in case you are wondering. The story telling was OK for me and I think the director Marc Webb whose experience included directing (500) Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man and few others, did a good enough job here. The Critics unfortunately were not totally impressed, but they were not trashing it completely either. Although audience were more receptive, but I feel its box office performance would not be great due to the surrounding controversies and the mixed reviews.
Overall my wife and I felt that this film was pretty enjoyable. We liked the story telling, the funny dwarfs and the songs. Even if it might not be as magical as the original animated version (amazingly it was so long ago from 1937) but still quite entertaining. It might not have been our most favorite but we felt the movie was fun and pleasing. So if you are willing to disregard all the noise related to the film, you should be able to enjoy this one objectively and see how all the things you loved in the original movie came to life.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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