(Live action remake of animated feature, so filed under animation, among other categories.)
Director – Marc Webb – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 119m
***1/2
Disney’s new Snow White redoes the first animated feature, with its eponymous heroine, wicked queen and dwarfs, as live action – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st
There are a very small number of watershed films after which cinema is never been quite the same again. One of them is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937), the first ever animated feature film, widely considered a folly until it became a huge success and helped fuel the rise of the Hollywood Studio that still bears its founder Walt Disney’s name today. Before that film, no-one made animated features. After that film, Disney regularly made animated features of a consistently high standard, and his name became synonymous with animation for the three decades until his death in 1966.
Yet, the film isn’t good simply because it was the first animated feature – it’s good for a whole host of other reasons, namely excellence in storytelling, character, visuals, and songs, elements which would similarly underscore his Studio’s output during the remainder of Disney’s lifetime. Given the film’s significance in both general movie and more specific Disney Studio history, the thought of remaking it is quite a challenge. Why would you even do it? (Why would you not do it?) After all, how could a film made today transform the movie business in anything like the way the 1937 film did?
On these terms, any contemporary remake would have to be very special indeed to measure up. The task of remaking Snow White and coming up with anywhere near the impact of the original is a nigh on impossible one. The phrase “setting yourself up to fail” springs to mind.
And so it is that Disney have taken the plunge and, combining state-of-the-art computer technology and live action, reimagined a new version of Snow White (with the Seven Dwarfs, all present and correct in the film narrative, yet curiously absent from the title.)
The problem with the current reimagining is that where the 1937 film was brave and bold and pioneering, this new one is desperately trying to recreate the original in live action, yet lacks that feeling of going against the grain to achieve the impossible. Perhaps the weight of responsibility was too much. It feels like a film dreamed up by money men desperate to recreate the original but, mostly, not doing anything too different with it (with one or two exceptional scenes, where a genuine reimagining of original elements pays off handsomely). Much of the film is a serviceable reboot, but lacks the magic.
Let’s start with the songs. A couple of them are more or less straight lifts from the original, and just as effective (provided you don’t mind that it’s been done before) – there is an engrossing version of Whistle While You Work as Snow White cleans the dwarfs’ cottage. However, the reworked Heigh-ho crams far too much into the scene, failing to understand the simplicity of execution in the original, adding an irritatingly knowing ”we know” every time one of the dwarfs is named in the song and even throwing in a nod at one point to the model-railway-inspired mining truck layout of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984).
Worse still, the dwarfs themselves, rather than being realised via moving drawings that delight an audience, feel like live action / visual effects composite rejects from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, 2012). Dopey (performed by Andrew Barth Feldman), the most compelling of the dwarfs as reconceived here, is turned into mistreated special person, whereas in the original he’s thick as two short planks but somehow gets through everything by dint of sheer optimism, which was a winsome combination.
A number of other unforgettable compositions from the original (I’m Wishing, Someday My Prince Will Come) are left out altogether. Most of the new songs are far less memorable and far more bland than these two reworkings, with one notable exception – after the banishing of the Wicked Queen, the liberated citizens start humming sequences of sounds on their own initiative, which build into a chorus of freedom anticipating the joys of life under the just rule of the newly reinstated Princess Snow White.
The film does okay with the casting of its heroine and villain, but again, the whole thing feels somewhat conservative, as if no-one was prepared to make any truly bold decisions in the characters’ reimagining. Rachel Zegler delivers a solid and believable heroine, but (through no fault of her own) she doesn’t take your breath away like she did in the reimagined West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021). It feels like Spielberg did the heavy lifting when he cast the then unknown Zegler and coaxed an extraordinary performance out of her, whereas here she’s the girl who could sing Maria in West Side Story so she ought to be able to perform the lead in Snow White.
Much the same goes for Gal Gadot (from Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins, 2017, and its sequel) as the Wicked Queen, projecting an unnerving narcissism. And yet, somehow, both characters mostly fail to move you as their animated original counterparts did.
The one major element that really improves on the original, though, is the Queen’s transformation into the old woman who takes the poisoned apple to Snow White. The visual effects animators have a field day with both the transformation and the aged, incognito Queen, turning that all too brief section of the film into an undeniable high point.
Conversely, the opening reel has far too much material showing us what a bad queen she is, where Walt’s original just went straight in and had the magic mirror declare the young girl the fairest in the land and the Queen send the unwilling huntsman off to kill her as quickly as Disney could engineer it. (At 83m, the original was roughly two thirds the length of this new, 116m version.)
An additional, minor coup in the new film’s favour are the numerous incidental birds and animals with whom (not which, because they are all, to some lesser degree, anthropomorphised) Snow White interacts. Whenever these appear – and in some scenes a good many of them appear – they are a real pleasure to watch.
However, the big problem with a lot of these Disney live action remakes of the company’s animated back catalogue is that many of them feel pointless when the original cartoons are as good as they are, because they can’t even begin to compare. Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh, 2015) and The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016) are rare exceptions which, while they might not be superior to the cartoons that inspired them, at least play out as impressive movies in their own right which at once achieve a degree of genuinely affectionate homage and manage to work on their own terms as original movies.
But, alas, the new Snow White is not up there with these exceptions: it’s a recognisable reboot, beautifully costumed and art directed, which lacks most of the qualities of true greatness found in the original from which it takes its inspiration. Disney are experts bar none at marketing their movies, and no doubt this will do well because they’ll do a fantastic promoting and selling job. Sadly, to this admirer of the original, the Disney Studio’s new version of Snow White for the most part fails to innovate enough to prevent it feeling ill-conceived. And, in part due to its opening reel, it’s far too long.
Disney’s Snow White is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, March 21st.
Trailer: