27/07/2012: Snow White and the Huntsmen [2012]

This was one of those movies I was really on the fence about seeing. On the one hand it’s trailer promised an impressive visual feast and an interesting retelling of the childhood story. On the other hand, it feature a teenage girl's dream team of Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth. But it was playing locally for cheap, so I dug out all my change and met up with a friend. In the end, I could have waited a couple of years or so to watch this on a rainy day on my television and I would have been better off.

Now, Snow White and the Huntsmen is not a terrible movie. It is actually kinda pretty decent, but it suffers from almost the exact problems I feared it would. The one problem I wasn’t expecting was a problem with the story. I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember much of the classic fairy-tale to begin with. I know there was a woman living with seven dwarves in the woods. (Let’s not read into that) And that she ate some poisoned apple, and a prince kissed her to wake her up. I can almost barely remember what part, if any, an evil queen had to do with anything. So while I may not be the best judge for accuracy, I’d say the story had quite a few tweaks, mostly to bring it to a more grand world impacting level, which isn’t necessarily bad. However, the movie doesn’t cover much, instead just throwing a lot of pretty visual effects at us without developing much of the characters, and barely explaining exactly what is happening beyond; Evil Queen takes over, the world apparently dies but no one will stand up to her. That's impressive storytelling. 

Spoilers ahead. Don’t worry, you could guess the entire movie easily.

The first problem with the characters was the dwarfs. There was 8. I mean anybody who knows anything about Snow White knows it is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Why would you start with eight? I actually spent a good 10 minutes trying to count them, whenever they were all on screen in the same shot, and I’m very sure that there was eight. Oh well that is okay, but then it is like someone realized this and they killed one off. So bam, now we have seven dwarves. Whatever, you want to get a little crazy with you dwarf math that is fine with me, but at least explain them. Are they an entire race, or are they just actual little people. And what is with the elder, I’m assuming he was a blind mystic but you didn’t give many hints there. Overall, as great as it was to see the dwarves they really didn’t get much character development, and seemed to be used solely for comic relief and to push the story forward. Don’t even get me started on that scene with the great stag in the woods.

Oh look. You even worked in the fucking apple.

Now, to complement the underdeveloped characters we have our main characters who might have gotten most of the screen time and development, but still didn’t get anywhere. I am of course talking about Kristen Stewart as Snow White. Now, I tend not to jump onto to many hate trains, but I jumped on the Kristen Stewart one pretty early and nothing I’ve seen has convinced me to get off it yet. I just heard on the French Toast Sunday Podcast that she cheated on someone with the director of this movie, which knocks her down a couple more.  Eitherway, once again, Stewart gives us that same empty slightly confused and emotionally challenged face the entire movie. As the inspiring heroine she fails pretty badly as well. There are a lot of famous movie pre-battle speeches, be it Lord of the Rings or Braveheart. Those always trigger a stirring of emotions deep in my gut but Stewart’s didn’t do squat for me. Oh well, I didn’t expect much from her and I wasn’t impressed. Leave it at that.

The rest of the cast was decent. I’ll admit that Chris Hemsworth (The Huntsmen) gives a decent performance, and he is a good actor even with that ridiculous mane of hair he is sporting. William played by Sam Claflin was a rather confusing character whose important moment just never really came. Now, there was one performance that just kind of shamed everyone else’s. That was Charlize Theron as the evil queen Ravenna. As usual, when you cast newcoming actors and lesser known ones alongside someone as well known and professional as Charlize Theron she kind of overshadows everyone with a great dramatic performance. While she may not always look her best as she jumps from fairest of them all to wrinkled old witch, her performance was very well done. The dwarves themselves, as little time as they get have some good moments, and my only question was whether they were all real little people or just movie magic?

I bet there was at least three women who spent 2 hours a day on her hair.

As for movie magic, the best thing Snow White and the Huntsmen has going for it is the visuals. The movie looks pretty fucking fantastic, with the whole magical fantasy land being crafted with everything from rolling hills and coasts, to dark swamps and magical forests. I mean it really looks like some of the bigger fantasy movies like The Lord of the Rings. However, considering how much time Snow White has in comparison to the infinite hours that LotR has, it might have been a lot of landscape for 2 hours. Now that runtime actually surprised me, and I was expecting an 1.5 hour wrap and then a 1.75, but in the end, it pushed all the way to a 127 minute runtime. I actually thought it was going to do a one on one finale when the Queen drugged Snow White with the apple. 

Overall, Snow White didn’t surprise me, and wasn’t the best choice for a Friday night movie. The sound quality in my theater was actually rather terrible and I had trouble understanding which may have put me in a much more sour mood, but eitherway it wasn’t a movie to rave about or demand people see it. It is good to see that the classic fairy-tale stories can continue being recycled in rather fresh ways, but Snow White and the Huntsmen felt almost like a different story with the Snow White mythology kinda shoved in. The names were okay, and the dwarves a present surprise, but the mirror and the apple were kind of a stretch. I’d say see it if you want to test out your new T.V. but don’t watch it for a great movie.

Of course the lead bad-ass can't use a sword. That would be to standard.

Update: So a lot of interesting things have happened since I first wrote this review. Kristen Stewart slept with the director, who is married, and after a huge and lame tabloid scandal is no longer dating Robert Paterson. She has also been scrapped from any sequel. Apparently, the franchise will go ahead along The Horseman's story. But that brings up an interesting question, how is Snow White and the Huntsmen a franchise after one moderately mediocre movie. Call yourself a trilogy maybe, but a franchise? In my book, you are not a franchise until you have at least a trilogy of movies and at least two other forms of media like books or video games as well as action figures. Eitherway, I don't really care, and see no need to franchise this movie.

Link:
Snow White and the Huntsman IMDb