I’m not sure how we ended up watching the new Snow White with Rachel Zegler but providentially it came to pass. I made the mistake of telling Hannah one of my favorite commentators—Lila Rose—said the movie had some conservative values. We were too mentally spent to write and too tired to do anything else; so, we decided, since I had 3 months of free Disney Plus, we should give it a try and see how far we got. Before I go into this I should mention I love Gal Gadot’s portrayal of Wonder woman and am truly sorry she had so little to work with in this film. Theres a lot to unpack here… bottom line—it wasn’t good. Now I’m not saying the reviewers who felt it had some good conservative values or some merits were entirely wrong, the elements were there—but it didn’t help the movie on a whole.

The energy levels/lack of memorability to the execution of the screenplay: Maybe I’ve watched too many Film Courage videos, or movies in general—but I’ve come to see in a quality film that in roughly twenty minutes you need several things to be done:

-Introduce your main character

-Create sympathy, relatability, and present conflict with the main character in their first few moments

-Introduce a central conflict
-Introduce a central theme

And I should add all these things that need to be done in a unique, well-acted, well-directed set of sequences. Snow White technically did these things, but it did so in almost all the ways a movie is not supposed to. For example, we’re presented with Snow White and that she has a loving family who’s good to the people and caring. While I appreciate the conservative aspect of a child being raised into a good home who teaches her compassion and a good set of values and beliefs it has to be presented in a unique way.

·         There was a lengthy unmemorable song “Where the good things grow” instead of just having a sequence that would have shown us Snow White’s family was kind and good. It’s telling not showing to have a long song about it instead of showing actions and character behaviors in conflict resolution. If the song had been excellent maybe there would have been a reason to let it slide but it was meh at best.

·          There was another violation of show don’t tell when the narrator has to announce that the queen died, and that the new queen is evil, etc. In Ella Enchanted  (a much less anticipated film with a much smaller budget and audience) they show us everything we need to know regarding the main character instead of telling us even though they have a narrator. The narrator simply says Ella didn’t know “something worse was adrift” and then it shifts to a scene of Ella at her mother’s bedside while she is sick and dying. He doesn’t say “Ella’s mother grew ill, and she and her father didn’t know, she’d never live through it…” and just keep going and going.

·         You didn’t need to say the queen was evil and explain it while Gal Gadot smirks in front of a mirror evilly. You could have simply shown her being cruel to someone or her plot to get rid of the father in some way.

·         I think that Snow White meets the thief and has her big song roughly twenty minutes in…it’s hard to tell because the movie’s energy level was so low that it felt like 40 minutes in. This wasn’t a bad plot choice, in fact I think it could have been a good call to action to have Snow White being too weak to speak out till she sees how harshly the queen treats a mere thief and has compassion on him for being desperate enough to steal.  However, the entire sequence was like a first draft of what I’d have thought up for the scene. What do I mean by this?

Scene Concept: Snow white is working in the castle under her cruel step-mother, and catches a thief stealing from the kitchen. He tells her she’s sheltered and doesn’t know what things are like out there and gets away.

That’s what I would scribble in my notes. That’s not literally all I would do. That summary is basically all we got in it’s simplest form. When crafting a scene, many things like placement, speech, goals, behaviors, subtext, theme and sheer entertainment value have to be considered. If Snow White is going to catch a thief stealing, I’d ask: What is the most interesting way for this to happen?

·         If they’re going to talk, what keeps them talking? Why does she have patience with him instead of calling the guards and why does he bother giving her his perspective and calling her out for being sheltered? That would delve into subtext. What does he think of her and what is she thinking of him? I got that he considered her to be a naïve innocent party in the whole thing, but he should have looked like there was more urgency to him trying to get away without being seen even if it wasn’t from her. If he believes the Queens cruel then he’d be worried about being caught by her guards if she’s that evil and should’ve been more rushed.

·         How do the characters enter and leave the scene? Does the thief have to escape guards? Are they caught talking? What would throw a wrench into the scene and create conflict? They could have had Snow caught talking to him by the guards, he gets away (in some elaborate manner through a window, down a rope something) and she is brought to the Queen because she let him escape and reprimanded. That would give Snow an opportunity to speak up under some pressure by insisting “maybe the boy had a reason to steal because people are starving out there.” Something that pushes the scene forward or creates choices and conflict. Instead, Snow white catches him filling a bag with potatoes, they talk, and he leaves the room.

·          In the next scene Snow White walks in and talks to the queen, and the thief is brought in and sentenced, and then they leave. Then Snow sings. If you see what I’m getting at it’s that nothing in these scenes is creative, intense, or snappy it’s just the bare bones of a scene being executed in it’s most plain manner.

The next scene was no better. The thief character is caught and we don’t see it (apparently this kingdom’s most skilled thief can’t steal potatoes successfully). He was the only character trying to have a personality and it was a struggle. The queen says to take his coat and tie him to the gate to freeze and once again, it’s in the dullest, most un-dramatic fashion. The guy is literally standing there with a dinky rope tying his wrists which he could get out of if he tried. He’s not tied in an uncomfortable position shivering, it doesn’t look painful or even unpleasant just meh (which describes a lot of this film). And I won’t even go into how time in this movie makes no sense. Snow White cleans the whole stinking castle and by the end of it the guards are still leading the thief to the gate to be tied up. This brings me to the second point because I have to go into it since this article is breaking down all that made up this cinematic banality.

The film had no concept of time: Where to start with this…the opening number was too long. The Waiting on a wish sequence shows a montage of cleaning but by the end of it the guards haven’t tied up the thief, the dwarves Hi Ho went on as long as the Naruto Sasuke final fight in Shippuden (if you don’t watch Naruto that just means it’s really stinking long), and that’s only the beginning:

·         There was a long scene with no music of Snow-White staring at animals in the forest. Not needed.

·         Instead of having Snow White get to the house and clean it before she goes to bed: she sleeps, they find her, then we have a long scene of memorizing names, then they have breakfast, then they have a food fight, then she talks them down—then she sings a song to make them clean house and get along.  

The film broke all rules for entering late and leaving early. It entered before the dawn of man and left—NEVER. Each sequence should introduce you at an interesting time, and make you exit the scene before you’re ever totally satisfied. This movie just dragged-out boring scenes with no conflict till you were checking the runtime to see how much was left.

The film had no concept of character:   No one in this movie really had a consistent character arc or a desire that I could follow the whole film. Their actions didn’t make any sense either.

·         Snow White seemed really innocent and naïve at the beginning, which I could have understood if her arc was kind of like Rapunzel in Tangled and she had to grow up and mature reconciling her ideas of good and evil in the world. But Snow White’s actions didn’t make sense either. She’s kind to the thief, but then she doesn’t like him or trust him, then he gets shot with an arrow to save her and she says “he only cares about himself.” They also immediately have a dance party after the theif gets off the operating table. And then they sing a love’ish song to each other. I missed what her personal journey was there. He’s saved her life twice by the time she says he only cares about himself, and she knows he’s only stealing to feed his friends so why judge him like that?

·         The evil queen acts very cold, controlled and seriously in the film when she’s not singing—then when her number comes up, she acts like a goofy outlandish show off. A villain’s song is supposed to reflect their personality put to music, not be hammy for the sake of being hammy.      

The music was bad: The best song in the movie was “Waiting on a Wish” and even that song was just good. There wasn’t a single song that actually blew me away or gave me chills, or made me feel emotional.

·         “All is Fair” may be the worst villain song ever written/sung for Disney and I’m including “Shiny” from Moana and the villain song in Wish which was also a terrible movie. At least those songs was funny, charismatic and fit the villains’ personalities. “All is Fair” sounded like a dying frog with a congested lung (I’m sorry Gal Gadot. I love your wonder woman but what they gave you to work with here didn’t turn out so good).

·          The love song was outdone by music from Galavant which is also a much lesser-known fantasy series and a comedy parody of a fairytale.

·         “Princess problems” was completely forgettable and dorky sounding.

·         Hi Ho went on too stinking long. Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho… you get it.

In summation, the music, writing, acting, directing, costumes, and overall execution left much to be desired in this film. I don’t know why the dwarves looked creepy as heck or why Snow White’s dress was so cartoonishly bad. The thief and his band of rejects looked like they got costumes from Disney Channel, only descendants had better costumes. If they’d wanted to save it they should have gone over the script about four more times and rewritten nearly all the music.