It’s a needed anchor though, considering the film’s actual problems, including perhaps why she was cast: This is a studio committee film determined to please all prospective ticket-buyers, including those who undoubtedly have noticed that as visually amazing as the first Disney animators’ work was, the O.G. Snow White is narratively simplistic and antiquated to the point of being (gasp) dated. So Snow White (2025) makes cursory gestures toward addressing these critiques, but the efforts are uneven and at odds with themselves. In trying to be both a modernization of a classic story and a worshipful ode to it, the movie clashes with itself like that red and blue dress in live, 4K definition.
The song “Someday My Prince Will Come” is gone, as is the love interest being an honest to Walt prince (Jonathan is more in the Robin Hood/Flynn Ryder vein, albeit without the mischievous edge), but the film still yearns to appeal to Disney adults who declare umbrage that someone might find offense at the concept of “magical” dwarfs. So the half-hearted compromise is a movie that simply refuses to use the word and replaces them with horrifying CGI creations which strive for ‘30s pop art, but fall into the bleak uncanny valley of Robert Zemeckis’ many ghastly 2000s motion-capture films (an eyesore Disney ironically made fun of in the actually savvy Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers).
The Dwarfs are CG nightmares, but only slightly more so than the digital bunnies, squirrels and birds that un-persuasively insist on enchantment as they bounce around the screen. Yet whether trying to awkwardly resuscitate ancient animation in live-action or to update it with cynically produced new songs, real magic remains elusive.
The one musical addition that really works, perhaps unsurprisingly, is when Zegler is given a modern musical “I Want” Song, “Waiting on a Wish.” Still, another that might earn points for its audacity is “All Is Fair,” Gal Gadot’s big number that reveals a much autotuned singing voice. The song, like everything else about her performance, is a big swing. But despite a game desire to vamp and camp it up, Gadot has yet to find another director like Patty Jenkins who can turn her innate onscreen blankness into an asset instead of a liability. The Evil Queen is ultimately a nonentity, and Gadot’s flat, vacant presence only complementing the movie insomuch as it matches the cosplay aesthetic of her gowns and scenes opposite a dark ride mirror special effect.
The blandness of this ostensibly bad queen captures in miniature everything wrong with Snow White (2025). Here is a movie that likely would have been made a lot sooner had Universal Pictures not so adroitly stolen Disney’s thunder during the beginning of the “live-action fairy tale” craze about 15 years ago with Snow White and the Huntsman. That 2012 film is also not particularly good, but by virtue of not needing to slavishly service the past, it could do weird things like let Charlize Theron devour the screen as a milk-bathing, soul-feasting Evil Queen succubus. It stood out as its own thing, even if that thing was little more than a feature-length My Chemical Romance music video.
Snow White (2025) has one enchanting asset in its lead casting, which Disney’s caution and inclination toward consumer-testing has done everything in its power to obfuscate (including by apparently throwing its star under the bus for a media narrative the company originally courted). As it stands, is the movie good, bad, or indifferent? It’s not a disaster like the worst live-action Disney remakes—think Pinocchio or the soulless The Lion King redo. But it doesn’t stand alongside the handful worth actually seeing—Cruella, The Jungle Book, maybe Cinderella.
