Banking on a guaranteed youth audience eager to see Kristen (Twilight) Stewart, director Rupert Sanders and his henchmen have taken a timeless fairytale and twisted it into a vapid exercise in stuntwork and computer-generated predictability.
Ablaze with nothing but latex, countless thundering horses and a faux castle rising out of the gorgeous Irish coast, Snow White and the Huntsman had even the 16-year-old sitting/texting next to me alternately laughing and yawning.
The close-ups of Charlize Theron gave me time to count the pores on her nose and admire the thickness of eye shadow re-applied in every scene. The action moments gave us a chance to observe the physical awkwardness of poor young Stewart, who gamely attempts to hold our attention amidst innumerable sword fights and an inane script. Dig this—two handsome suitors and not one jot of actual romance.
But what this film does offer is the answer to a burning question: how often did women of the Middle Ages apply their mascara? It also teaches us that despite being abandoned in the midst of a snowy forest without food, water or shelter, it IS possible to find enough makeup to justify the next close-up. Whew!
Bored and bursting with overpriced popcorn, I rolled out of the theater yesterday wondering how so many cinematic collaborators could have screwed up a classic fairytale? But they did.
A few hours later, I realized what a cheap trick the whole film was, offering us latexy monsters, icky cute pixies and fairies, even exploding black plastic goblins in service to the evil queen.
Worst was the film’s substitution of the original moral—that evil intentions and jealousy turn humans into ugly monsters. In its place we get a lesson fit for a vain and superficial 21st century. Old age is the ultimate evil, the one thing the wicked queen Theron—looking frankly frumpy and lumpy under all that make-up—fears.
If there’s one stereotype that does not need reinforcing in our depthless culture, it is this one—that no fate could be worse than growing old. Death? ha! The one thing this Wicked Queen fears is wrinkles!
Without redemption—this film is a lackluster piece of trash.
