Snow White and the Huntsman: Review By slysnide

Based on a German folktale which the Brothers Grimm compiled into a story in 1812, the most famous interpretation of this dark tale came in 1937 from Walt Disney Pictures, and still stands tall today. Since then there have been countless interpretations of the tale, though none nearly as famous, nor as widespread. Unfortunately, this one was forgetful, yet made it to international audiences.

Universal's take was written by Evan Daugherty, Hossein Amini, and John Lee Hanc*ck. Their has the same basic idea of the evil Queen (Charlize Theron) wanting to kill Snow White (Kristin Stewart) and hiring the brave Hunstman (Chris Hemsworth) to do it. Except this time Snow White is a horrible actress, the huntsman is a drunken brute, their relationship isn't believable as it should be an acquaintance thing tops, and their chemistry just isn't there. Not to mention that the storyline becomes too epic too quickly, as it jumps from merely trying to escape the evil queen to riling up the kingdom to rebel against her, and all in the space of 127 minutes. Granted the film as a whole is still more tolerable than most fan fiction films, and the pacing starts well, but there's no middle ground to this story.

Considering that all three principal actors overacted their roles way too much, then it was surprising that the A-listers who appeared in the film were many of the dwarves. They were Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Nick Frost, and John Harris. Make what you will of this odd combination of talent, but I could only scratch my head at how odd this was given how horrible the three leads were in their roles. You'd have thought that some of the dwarves' talent would've rubbed off on them after a while of shooting, but no. However, because the three leads have the most screen time, I'm only taking their acting into account in my acting rating.

Now the one thing director Rupert Sanders did get right was the visuals. They were very gothic, with lots of blacks and grays, and when that's juxtaposed against the technicolor world of the dwarves, your eyes really widen with surprise. It was quite a marvelous thing to see after so much darkness in visuals and tone of the story. However, even if the story were overall happier, the technicolor splendor would still stand tall on its own. It reminiscent of Underland from Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" (2010), except with better lighting. So if for any reason, see the film for the visuals.

Overall, this story needed to be a little less epic in approach, and new actors needed to be cast for the two main leads. Rewrite all their dialogue and you'd have a decent script which would be better than this, but still not much.