Snow White (2025)  

Review: written April 2025

Adequate rather than memorable, political rather than innovative

Arriving amid a deluge of prejudgement, rumours and muddled messaging from cast members, it can be hard to separate the preconjecture from the reality. But here goes.

This is the latest ‘live-action’ remake from Disney, going back to the very first animated feature from Disney from 1937, based on the Grimm’s Fairy Tale, as its source material. For all the talk of what would be different, the story mirrors that first one pretty closely, with some extra songs thrown in, and a bit more backstory and agency for the lead character.

Snow White, so monikered in this version as she was born during a snow storm, is daughter to the king and queen of a fair and egalitarian land. Everyone works together, and shares in the produce of the land. The idyll is lost when her mother dies, and her stepmother wrests control of the Kingdom, taking it in a very different direction. Now, farmers become soldiers, and the acquisition of wealth is the driving ambition of the new Queen, and, it is inferred, an ambition she assumes her citizens should prioritise too. The peoples abundance of all things they need – including happiness – gives way to hardship brought on by a singular focus on filling out the Queen’s treasury. When Snow White comes of age and starts to voice her own view of right and wrong, she has to flee into hiding, finding herself living with 7 diminutive miners. Along the way she encounters and gets aid from various magical creatures of the forest, and a bandit (n.b. more Robin Hood than prince Charming this time, in keeping with the films overarching themes).

So far so traditional – so how does it all come together? Well on the plus side, the cast are good – Rachel Zegler has a great voice and manages to embody the innocence of the original with some added more modern twist on a Disney heroine. In short, she actually drives story and doesn’t just wait for a man to come along and rescue her. Well, not all the time. Gal Gadot hams it up marvellously as the Evil Queen, and Andrew Burnap plays his bandit role with more than a touch of tongue in cheek. Add some big grand sets of the town and forest, and the movie has some sense of scale.

That said, it never feels as warm and heartfelt as the original, regardless of whatever shortcomings the 1937 version had. And with its tale of capitalist evil leader taking over and subverting a previously peaceful and fair society feels.. well, a lot more political than I was expecting for a kids movie. As grand as the production design is, it’s hard to match that world created by Disney 88 years ago.

And let’s talk about those dwarves. Disney made much ado about how they engaged the Little People of America organisations in how the characters could be depicted sensitively, and chose not to cast little people but to use cgi in a bid to avoid feeding any derogatory stereotypes. And after all that, they’ve come up with something – remarkably similar to the animated movie! Like the movie as a whole, they’re not bad – you just wonder why such a big fuss was made.

The original songs still zing, while the new ones are adequate rather than memorable.

So acting ok, design ok, story works ok, old songs great, new ones ..ok, it’s just all.. ok. And that makes me wonder why making the movie at all was deemed a good idea. Unless of course, it’s a capitalist impulse to put people to work making money, over truly making people happy? Your six to ten year olds might enjoy it... it’s really not a bad movie. But it’s hard to imagine people will look back on this as a Disney classic.