REVIEW: Snow White and the Huntsman

Courtesy of Universal

I’m not sure if the world needed an emo retelling of Snow White, but we've certainly got one now. Snow White and the Huntsman eradicates any wonder and charm the classic fairy tale might’ve contained, replacing them with a somber tone, sullen characters and at least one crazy performance that should live on for years as the height of camp. The result is exactly what you’d expect if you gave that sulky kid in Hot Topic an unlimited budget and told him to go nuts on anything in the public domain. 

Rupert Sanders, making his directorial debut (with a screenplay credited to Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini), appears to be striving to craft this generation’s definitive medieval epic. Instead, it looks like he watched Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones for a few hours and tried to reconstruct from memory. In trying to duplicate that level of quality, he’s delivered the generic supermarket version instead. It looks terrific, but that’s about all it has going for it.

As for plot, you mostly know the drill. Magic mirror tells evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) that Snow White (Kristen Stewart) is the fairest in the land. (First of many mistakes: Stewart is fairer than Theron? Come on. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that’s a bit ridiculous.) Ravenna decides Snow White has to die, hires the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) to do the job. Huntsman learns Snow White is pure and innocent, so he refuses to kill her.

That’s where this update diverges from the source. The titular characters eventually team up with a prince (Sam Clafin) and some dwarves, who are now murderous bandits (and played by phenomenal actors – including Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone and Nick Frost – who easily upstage the “stars”). They form an army and wage war against Ravenna in hopes of restoring Snow White to her rightful place on the throne.

Thank God for those dwarves, who finally breathe some life into the film around the one-hour mark. Until then, it’s one morose scene after another. Hemsworth gives it a shot a little sooner, but even Thor is powerless when saddled with such a bland character and tired screenplay. I’m not even sure why Clafin is there, since all of the prince’s most memorable story beats are handed over to the Huntsman. 

As for Stewart…hoo boy. I've defended her many times in the past, and I still think her work in The Runaways, Adventureland and Into the Wild is underrated. But even I can't stick up for her performance here. She’s basically Bella Swan in chainmail, sporting the worst British accent since Kevin Costner played Robin Hood. I don’t know if it was just tough to shake her Twilight character or what, but her “riding into battle” face could easily be mistaken for the world's worst case of heartburn. (On the plus side, I didn’t notice her infamous lip-biting tic once. So there’s that.

Theron is a great source of accidental entertainment value, since she’s apparently in a different movie altogether. Every line reading is so over the top that Nicolas Cage would tell her take it down a notch. There’s nothing wrong with going the scenery-chewing route when you’re playing a villain. But going from a whisper to a scream on every single line just gets ridiculous after a while. There’s a halfhearted effort to humanize her character by throwing in a quick origin story, but it’s vague and goes nowhere.

Who would’ve guessed that Mirror Mirror would end up being the better take on Snow White? At least it didn’t take itself so freakin’ seriously. Chalk another one up to a post-Avengers summer slump.

Snow White and the Huntsman is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and brief sensuality.

Grade: D+