[Watch the review above and read it below!]
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With all the noise surrounding Disney‘s live-action Snow White remake – from Rachel Zegler’s much-memed comments to debates about the dwarves—it was hard not to approach this one with a bit of hesitation. I went in hoping to shut all that out and judge it on its own terms. And to be fair, it’s not quite the all-out disaster some were predicting. But that doesn’t mean it’s good. Far from it.
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There’s an awkwardness baked into a lot of this film. You can feel the tug-of-war between different visions, like a movie caught in mid-pivot and never quite finding its footing. At times, it’s hard to tell whether what’s on screen is the result of last-minute reshoots or just a confused script. Either way, the finished product plays out like an oddly stitched-together patchwork that never really comes to life. In my screening, packed with families, the kids were noticeably quiet—and not in a good way. Walking out, I overheard more than one parent mention their child had nodded off. That probably says a lot.
I thought Rachel Zegler was quite solid in the title role, bringing enough charm and a good singing voice to a Snow White who’s been slightly tweaked to fit modern sensibilities. Whatever your feelings about her off-screen remarks, it’s clear she’s giving it her all here. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Gal Gadot, whose Evil Queen never quite works. Gadot swings for camp but ends up somewhere between awkward and oddly flat. Her scenes often feel stiff, and the sense of menace just isn’t there—she’s playing evil, but you can see the effort in every beat.
One of the stranger things about Snow White is the way it handles its supporting characters. The film juggles two groups—the dwarves and the bandits—and neither fits comfortably into the story. It’s hard not to wonder whether this was the result of production chaos, with Disney scrambling to balance early ideas with last-minute course corrections. Whatever the reason, the film feels disjointed, with subplots that don’t quite connect and leave the story feeling fragmented.
Visually, the film struggles too. Some moments have a nice enough storybook quality, but much of the CGI is glaringly artificial. There are scenes so drenched in digital effects that they lose any sense of physicality. And the dwarves, in particular… yeesh. They sit firmly in the uncanny valley—they look too human to be charmingly animated and too animated to pass as human. They were, basically, unsettling, and I couldn’t help but think they should have just leaned further into a cartoony look.
As for the songs, they’re serviceable in that safe, if forgettable, modern-Disney kind of way. “Waiting on a Wish” is probably the standout among the new tunes, even if it does feel like it wandered in from Moana.
In the end, Snow White isn’t the total trainwreck that many had feared (or hoped for, depending on your stance). But it’s messy, dull, and often lifeless. Another live-action Disney remake that leaves you wondering why they bothered. Not the worst of the bunch, but nowhere near the fairest of them all.
