Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Snow White and the Huntsmen

"Snow White and the Huntsman" should be a better film than it is.  Instead it feels like a film that was made for the SciFi channel, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as I very much enjoyed their take on the 2007 Wizard of Oz story with "Tin Man".

The film falls in line with some of the other recent adaptations of the classic fairytale stories (e.g. "Red Riding Hood") where a darker approach to telling the well known story is used.  While I am not completely against the approach, the story needs to have more substance to fall back on and less of a visual spectacle to carry the film.  I was almost expecting Arnold Schwartzineiger to be the magical mirror that comes into a human form out of the liquid metal.  Or that an R.O.U.S. would attack Snow White and the Huntsman in the Dark Forest, or was it the Fire Swamp from "Princess Bride".

The main story is familiar as Snow White (Kristen Stewart) is opposed by the evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and is being hunted by The Huntsmen (Chris Hemsworth).  The script is lacking and the acting suffers as a result.  But then again many of the target audience isn't going for acting.  The most impressive sequence of the film is when Snow White and the Huntsman meet the seven dwarfs.  While the names of the dwarfs are not the familiar names from Disney, they are also not portrayed by actual dwarfs, but instead continue the incredible casting of the film by including the talents of Toby Jones, Nick Frost, Bob Hoskins, Brian Gleeson, Eddie Marsan and Ian McShane.  They perhaps have the best writing and with the talent deliver on a much wider scale.

The film is truly a waste of its potential and only magnifies the brilliance of "Once Upon a Time" on ABC.  Updating a known story isn't difficult, and even incorporating stylized special effects can be done well, but "Snow White and the Huntsmen" just isn't where it will be found and neither was "Mirror Mirror".  For a dramatic film the audience shouldn't be laughing at the attempts to update the story.  The film is what it is and it is a 2 Quack film.  
 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...