With Some Dwarves Added On for Some Reason

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with revisiting fairy tales. While we can mock Disney for going back and remaking films we already know, showing a certain creative bankruptcy to their filmmaking process, the core stories that they’re touching – Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, et al – are classics that can be revisited and reinvented over and over again to dig into the narrative meat to see what makes those stories tick. I’ve reviewed a few different Snow White versions over the years, from Snow White: A Tale of Terror to Mirror Mirror and the pair of Snow White and the Huntsman films, and while I didn’t always click with those movies I did applaud the attempts at doing something new or interesting with those films.

Naturally that’s not a claim we can make with Snow White, Disney’s 2025 remake of their 1937 animated original, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. While the film takes some narrative liberties with the source film, it still sticks pretty true to the style, substance, and content of that film. Which sucks because, watching the film, it felt like there was a more interesting, more creative version of the film that might have existed at one point before someone – upper management, focus groups, test audiences – decided that the version that had been made wasn’t what they wanted, and the film was hacked up and reshot until it barely had any energy to it at all.

The film, as presented, focuses on our titular heroine (played as a baby by Olivia Verrall, as a child by Emilia Faucher, and then as an adult by Rachel Zegler), so named after an awful blizzard that caught her mother and father, the Queen and King of the kingdom, out in their carriage on the night that the child was born. She was raised to be kind and good by her parents, to care for the people of her land and to prioritize their needs, to ensure the health and prosperity of the kingdom above all else.

Unfortunately, when Snow was young, her mother died. Her father, grief stricken, eventually became enamored with another woman that could fill the void in his heart. That woman (played by Gal Gadot) wrapped him around her finger and they were soon wed. Quickly after, reports of enemies on their border forced her father to leave the castle and he never returned. This left Snow’s stepmother in charge of the kingdom, and she quickly became an evil queen who stole from the people to enrich her own life. She treated Snow like a servant and kept her locked in the castle for years. But a chance encounter with a thief, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), at the castle causes Snow to reevaluate everything that’s happened. She realizes that her kingdom is struggling and something has to change. And when her evil stepmother finds out that this change in Snow makes her the fairest in the land, well… bad things are about to come for our heroic young princess.

From the first frame to the last, Snow White is an ungodly mess of a film. As directed by Marc Webb, who also directed the two The Amazing Spider-man films, the film feels less like a movie and more like a Broadway production putting on airs. Webb brings a level of artifice to the production that feels weird, like nothing takes place in any kind of grounded reality at all. It makes sense for that kind of artifice in an animated film, or in a Broadway production, but it doesn’t feel right in this film where it staggers wildly between attempts at both realism and animated artificiality at the same time.

This artificiality comes out in weird ways, too. For instance, when Snow is at the castle, she’s dressed in an old dress she’s had for years. The film implies that once the Evil Queen takes over and makes Snow White into a servant she stops caring for the girl, forcing her to make this one dress last for years. But then, the second the Queen sends Snow out into the woods to pick apples, all so that the Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) can kill the girl and cut out her heart, Snow is suddenly dressed in a new frock (based on the dress she wore in the original, animated film). Why? She’s going to be killed. Why put the girl in silk and tule? Well, because the film needs her in that dress, that’s why.

For another instance, Snow ends up in the magical forest having fled the Huntsman, and the creatures there look like animals from Disney animated films. They look ghastly when compared to the live action actors of the film. The fakeness of the animals didn’t seem bad in the original, animated movie because everything was done in the same style, including the humans. The second you have some things that look realistic and others that don’t, though, it all starts to feel strange, like a malformed homunculus of CGI.

Of course, in this regard, nothing compares to just how awful the Seven Dwarves look in this film. These guys were created with CGI, made to look as they did in the original animated film, and you get the vibe this was done so that the studio didn’t have to have little people actors in an attempt to dodge ableism complaints. “Why are little actors only ever hired to play dwarves and other, similar magical creatures?” It’s weirder still, though, when you notice that one of the other characters in the film, one of the bandits Snow eventually ends up working with, is a little person (I really hope I’m using that term properly), which makes the fakeness of the CGI dwarves stand out even more.

Looking into the film, it seems that Disney was unsatisfied with the original cut of the film and demanded extensive reshoots. There was a plotline with Snow meeting up with a gang of bandits and becoming one with their group. When you watch the film, and count the bandits, you’ll notice there are seven of them, not counting Johnathan, the Prince Charming replacement in this film. It’s pretty easy to think that the film was called Snow White and not Snow White and the Seven Dwarves because the dwarves weren’t meant to be in the film at all, with all of their material getting added in during reshoots as the studio had to scramble to remake the film and get rid of most (but not all) of the bandit material.

Frankly, I would have much rather seen the original cut of the film because at least that sounds like it was trying to do some interesting things narratively. Instead we get this cut-together, half-formed thing that isn’t really a remake but also desperately is trying to be and it doesn’t work on either front. I’m sure so much of the artificiality of the film came from Disney trying to reshape a film that didn’t much resemble Snow White and the Seven Dwarves into something that did, and it creates this odd, fake quality that makes the movie look unsettling.

Not that I think these edits alone are what ruin the film. Even if everything had been left alone after the initial cut, there’s still plenty that doesn’t work about the film. Even setting aside the fact that Snow in this film doesn’t have “skin as white as snow” (which was why she was given her name in the original fairy tale, although I think the film comes up with about as good of an explanation as it can), there’s so much about the movie that feels off. It has a bloated runtime, with a number of pacing issues, all while struggling through a massive identity crisis.

Is Snow a servant? Is she the curiosity of the town? Is she a sleeping beauty that must be saved? This film mashes together elements of multiple fairy tales, many of which we saw in other recent Disney remakes, making this film feel less than fresh. Yes, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves came first for Disney, and it helped set the template that the studio followed for decades of the animated releases, but that also means that so many of its elements were taken and done better elsewhere, and this film seems to only double-down on that. This is a remake that feels like a copy of a copy of a copy, and that doesn’t help it develop the energy and personality to make it feel like its own thing. I’m sure that’s why Webb had intentions of changing major details but it’s clear the filmmaker didn’t change enough.

And, honestly, the film had too many damn songs in it. I get it’s a Disney musical, so it has to have some songs, but the film can’t go without a musical production every five minutes. It’s barely over an hour-and-a-half, but it feels interminably long when it constantly breaks for scene-filling musical padding just to stretch the story out. And I don’t think that would be a big deal if the songs were good, but they’re not. The best tracks in the movie are “Hi-Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” which, you will notice, are the two songs that came from the original film. Everything else feels like filler book material, not runaway pop hits.

That’s not a knock against the performers and they are truly, clearly trying to make every frame and every song of this film work. Zegler is a fantastic singer and actress, full of charisma to the point where she elevates every scene she’s in. When she’s working with the other (live) actors, the film very nearly finds the energy it needs to be at least watchable, if not good. She can even play against a green screen with nothing real around her and make herself shine even if the scenes suck. But one actress, working her hardest and elevating everyone around her, still cannot save a bad movie, and Snow White is just plain bad. Zegler deserves better than this film.

Snow White sucks. I went into it hoping that all the critics and people online had dogpiled on it because we are all growing increasingly tired of Disney recycling their material over and over again. Sadly, no, this film is just as bad as everyone described. Between a poor initial production, horrible reshoots that mangled the film, and far too much executive meddling to ever let this film breathe like it needed to, Snow White has to stand as one of the worst Disney remakes we’ve gotten yet. Hopefully this teaches the Mouse House that some of their animated classics should simply be left alone.

Although with the success of the Lilo and Stitch remake, who knows what lesson Disney will take. Five-to-one we hear reports of a Saludos Amigos film in the next couple of years, and that makes me sad…