Snow White
★ ½
Snow White is the latest in Disney’s live action remakes. While some of their remakes have been moderately decent, they’re generally unnecessary. Often, the original outshines the new.
Snow White, while it has some fun moments, doesn’t really advance the argument for these redos.
Snow White (Rachel Zegler) is a princess. Her mother, the Good Queen (Lorena Andrea) dies of illness. This leaves Snow and her father, the Good King (Hadley Fraser), heartbroken. A woman, later known as the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot), comes into their lives and sweeps the Good King off his feet. The Evil Queen encourages the Good King to fight in a war where he is reportedly killed.
Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen
© 2025 Walt Disney Pictures
The Evil Queen wastes no time taking control of the kingdom and forcing Snow into servitude. The kingdom suffers while the Evil Queen lives lavishly. When the Queen’s Magic Mirror (Patrick Page) tells her she’s no longer “the fairest of them all,” the Queen enlists The Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to take Snow into the woods, kill her and bring back her heart in a box.
The Huntsman lets Snow go and she stumbles upon a cabin in the forest owned by seven dwarves. They are: Bashful (Tituss Burgess), Doc (Jeremy Swift), Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman), Grumpy (Martin Klebba), Happy (George Salazar), Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen) and Sneezy (Jason Kravits).
Rachel Zegler as Snow White in the forest
© 2025 Walt Disney Pictures
The beginning of this version stays fairly true to the original animated film but gets into far more detail than necessary. The expansion of backstory is tedious, boring and slows the film down. From there, Snow White deviates quite a bit from the original in what feels like scattered puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together. It leads to an empty, uninspired climax that lacks triumph or emotional brevity.
There are a lot of new musical numbers that are immediately forgettable and fantastically uninspired. If there are bright spots, it’s that Zegler can carry a tune. She has a lovely voice that’s put to great misuse here. But even the obvious autotune can’t save Gadot’s musical numbers. Her voice is out of place and often jarringly awful.
Zegler makes a decent Snow White despite the sloppy, subpar script. Gadot is thoroughly unconvincing as the Evil Queen, offering little more than a raspy voice reciting bad dialogue. Her beauty is supposed to be rivaled only by Snow, yet she spends most of the film with her head covered in a balaclava style headpiece. I’d argue that this wardrobe choice might be one of the reasons her beauty no longer strikes the Mirror’s fancy.
Snow makes a deer friend
© 2025 Walt Disney Pictures
There are elements in this film that are fun. It’s the piecing together of them that fractures the story and any emotional gravitas it tries to invoke.
A final observation: the seven dwarves go off to work in a mine on a daily basis. They mine diamonds, rubies and other fine jewels. The amount of jewels in their possession is massive. It’s never mentioned that they work for anyone, so we can safely assume that they’re self-employed.
These guys are filthy rich, given the jewels in the mine and it’s a sample of the sloppy storytelling in Snow White. I suppose we’re supposed to overlook it and move on with the story, but these guys could build their own castle, buy an army and feed their own kingdom for generations to come.
Oh well. I guess the massive resources of the dwarves are the least of this film’s problems.
Rated: PG for violence, some peril, thematic elements and brief rude humor.
Running Time: 1h 49m
Directed by: Marc Webb
Written by: Greta Gerwig, Erin Cressida Wilson
Starring: Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Andrew Burnap, Andrew Barth Feldman, Ansu Kabia, Tituss Burgess, Martin Klebba, Jason Kravits, George Salazar, Jeremy Swift, Andy Grotelueschen
Kids & Family, Fantasy, Adventure, Drama
