Disney's Snow White Review!

Alright! Today I'm reviewing the 2025 live-action remake of the 1937 animation classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, now titled 'Disney's Snow White.' To avoid creating controversy, the 'Seven Dwarfs' were dropped, and to let us know that it would be terrible, they added 'Disney.' 

Snow White is an absolutely fascinating case study. For the first 50 minutes, it's your regular Disney rehash - the unneeded explanations for how the princess got her name, a 20-minute prologue with her parents who die, the music you know and love from the cartoon ("Hi Ho" and "Whistle While You Work"), random characters added in to pad screentime - the works. It's normal. It's no worse than, say, The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin. I was almost starting to enjoy the trip down Snow White memory lane when, like night going to day, the movie did a 180. 

Now, a word of context might be appropriate here. I always try to stick to the review and not the movie experience, but I'm making an exception here. Snow White proved an unforgettable memory for me and my friend with whom I watched the film, for as soon as "Whistle While You Work" ended, he received a phone call, so we naturally had to pause the movie. It had hitherto been normal, but it is at precisely this point that the movie went off the rails to become the Snow White movie that dethroned Dragon Ball as the lowest-rated movie on IMDb. 

As soon as "Whistle While You Work" ends, Snow White leaves the Dwarfs' (Dwarves?) house and stumbles into her new love interest, Jonathan, a thief she met earlier in the film (And, according to the film's timeline, the day before). He started to sing-talk and I let out an involuntary "No, not another one," and from then on it was impossible to take the movie seriously. He and Snow White sing a duet called "Princess Problems," where he belittles her for three minutes, and this is where the main romance of the movie stems from (And that she gave him half a crust of bread earlier. Can't forget that). Then the movie falls into the rabbit hole of madness and there's just... so much to unpack. 

First of all. 

Watching them go through the motions of a Disney Classic is somewhat enjoyable and distracts the mind. As soon as they leave the familiar territory and start trying new things, all of the connection and interest in the movie burns out as quickly as a Pueblo Scout's first campfire, and you start noticing a few things. One of the first things you're bound to think is "Wow. There's a lot of CGI here." 

Now, we have to be honest - the CGI is very high quality. It's not a bad green screen that we're talking about here; it's the biggest uncanny valley since Jim Carrey's A Christmas Carol. Yeah, Snow White talks to rabbits, squirrels, birds, deer, the works! But they don't look like actual animals; they look like a Facebook video titled "Using A.I. to bring Disney Characters to Life." Yeah, I can identify that it's supposed to be a deer, but it also looks nothing like a deer, and the more it appears, the more it becomes a running gag, and when the fat hedgehog gives a thumbs-up at the end, it's one of the greatest punchlines in all of cinematic history. 

This brings us to the Seven Dwarfs. Bringing Disney's iconic characters to life is a tricky thing to achieve in live action, and CGI has been helpful with more animated characters like the Genie from Aladdin or the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. So too the seven dwarves, but here the overall effect doesn't look so much as they were "brought to life" as they were "brought to death." For all the wonders of puppetry and motion capture technology and a budget of over 300 million dollars, you can't replicate the light inside someone's eyes, and the primeval brain inside recognizes that they are threats. This did not stop Dopey from having more chemistry with Snow White than the Jonathan character, though. 

This is where we also start to question the plot holes and... interesting changes made to the original. It's like they realized that they can't completely stay in the original's shadow, they have to change a few things to stand out (Which is true). Unfortunately, everything they added is boring and falls flat. After spending the night with the seven dwarves, Snow White leaves in the morning and meets up with Jonathan and his band of six merry followers... another group of seven. And now we have to wonder - did they really mean to have an ensemble of 14 supporting characters? A band of seven dwarves and then another band of seven, one of which has a regular person with dwarfism? 

Even worse is that the second group of seven appears to have had all of their scenes cut. Snow White calls one by name despite never learning it, a romance between two of them is hinted at/used as payoff but never developed, and five of the seven new characters don't even show up in the finale. Only the crossbow dwarfism man is mildly relevant to the plot, and even then, it's because he single-handedly thwarts the Evil Queen's evil plan to stab Snow White by shooting the dagger out of her hand with his crossbow. Then she gives up, smashes the magic mirror, and gets absorbed into it as if she were a Spider-Man villain. 

That's another thing that was quite odd about the movie - the finale. After establishing that people don't even recognize Snow White anymore because she's been presumed missing for eight years or so, the Queen publicly gloats about her death, and three days later, a young maiden shows up in the castle grounds. I kid you not, I'll link the scene here, but Snow White walks into the castle grounds and instantly attracts the support of the entire community, who march with her until the Queen and start a revolution. The problem is that Snow White doesn't give a big rallying speech or even say a single word; she just walks dramatically through the gates, and luckily the peasants know that red typically signifies the lead in musical theatre so they follow her. And then the final confrontation with the Queen just features a rehash of the only metaphor the Queen uses the entire movie, crossbow guy, and she dies. And then the movie ends. 

Also, how did we extend the movie thirty minutes and add in a new group of seven characters, but we still don't have any explanation for why the Evil Queen is Evil, why she cares so much about being the fairest of them all, or how she is even listed as the fairest of them all when inner character obviously affects the mirror's calculations.

Also also, I hate talking politics or seeing politics in places where they were never intended to be, but I did notice that the ending march scene deliberately places Snow White and several female background characters in the forefront for the march scene. I don't know if they were trying to be slick with that and empowerment or whatever (yay), but I found it funny since the person they were fighting against was the evil... y'know... queen. Not everyone can be Barbie. 

They also failed to deliver on the Evil Queen. Now, a lot of criticism gets directed towards Gal Gadot's acting, but it honestly doesn't matter in a film like this. It could have been Angela Bassett and it still would have been bad. I will, however, dock a million points for how poorly they adapted the iconic transformation scene. In the original, she goes down to her dungeon lair and combines "The Black of Night, An Old Hag's Cackle, A Scream of Fright, and A Blast of Wind" in beakers held over open flame and then has the potion hit by lightning to mix it well and begin the magic spell, causing a hideous and incredibly dramatic transformation scene. In the new one, she puts two drops into a chalice, and then a purple CGI cloud swirls around her. Her voice doesn't even change! The problem with the character wasn't bad acting; it was losing the menace that the original had. She's not so much the Evil Queen as she is... the Queen, and it's not Gal Gadot's fault that that happens. 

One more comment and then we'll move onto the closing statements - a major problem for adapting Snow White and trying to turn her into a more active "get it girl" character is that her role in her own fairytale is inherently passive. The Queen subdues her for, like, a decade in her own house, she is saved by the Huntsman's mercy, she gets scared in the woods, takes a nap in a stranger's house (?), eats candy offered by a stranger, and then is saved from eternal sleep by the prince while the dwarves kill the Evil Queen. Now, it makes sense when it's a cartoon from 90 years ago and she's 14 in that story, but it's 2025! We want more active heroes in our stories! We prefer a Moana to a Sleeping Beauty; that's just how it works. 

So they have to "modernize" it! No, that doesn't mean making it "woke"; just try to give it a more normal hero's journey arc. But since the Snow White remake feels obligated to respect the original's plot (but only sometimes, because they change quite a bit), Snow White still does all of these very passive things. They might have gotten rid of the "Someday My Prince Will Come" song, but it's replaced by an equally passive one literally called "Waiting on a Wish," and since the plot doesn't have a place for her to be active if not in the finale, she has to freeze time to sing it. My biggest gripe is that, to fit this mediocre "I Want" song in the movie, they had to axe "I'm Wishing," "One Love," and "Someday My Prince Will Come," the three most beautiful and romantic songs in Disney's 100+ year history. 

I'd also like to take a moment to recognize the absolute failure of the costuming department here. The medieval costumes all look modern and plastic-y, and Snow White's main outfit looks similar to something seen at a Spirit Halloween. And they kept the iconic Snow White bob, yes, but at what cost? Rachel Zegler is the only consistently good part of the movie, but she's overshadowed by her atrocious co-star. 

Snow White is unconvincing as a romantic movie, a remake of an animated classic, a musical, a piece of social commentary on a frankly dated fairy tale, and as a regular movie. It's full of plot holes, moments that don't land, uncanny valley CGI, and the worst wig ever seen in a movie. It's truly awful, but it might make for a fun "so bad it's good" night with friends. If anything, it's interesting that they failed this bad when Mirror, Mirror, and Once Upon A Time both laid the blueprint for a modernized, independent, and exciting Snow White over a decade ago. 

Overall, I'm giving Snow White a 1/10. "Snow White burned so live-action Tangled could also burn."  

And for funsies, I'm going to be breaking down the controversies surrounding the movie. I don't particularly care about any of these issues, but I imagine a lot of reviews might hold biases because of these issues and act like the movie sucks because of them, which is untrue. The movie sucks for all of the reasons listed above; the disastrous PR was just noise. 

• Snow White is portrayed by a Latina actress

Snow White faced a lot of criticism for casting the Latina Rachel Zegler as Snow White, who is said to have "skin as white as snow." Now, I think this is a bogus criticism since 1) Rachel Zegler is a white Latina, so I dunno what they're getting on about, and 2) she is extremely talented. But I do think that, with this casting announcement, they should have explained the alterations to the origins of her name - that she is named "Snow White" after being born during a horrific snow storm. That might have helped with the online backlash, or at least given internet commentators defending the movie something to grasp onto. 

• Unkind comments about the original movie. 

Rachel Zegler actually earned some criticism after making a few unkind comments about the original movie, saying, "The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her.... she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true."

The problem is that this statement isn't true. She is still saved by the prince, the only difference is that she doesn't actively wish for a prince. Instead, she actively wishes for a miracle. Compare the lyrics:

1937 ("Wishing Well"): "I'm wishing (I'm wishing)/For the one I love/To find me (To find me)/Today (Today)/I'm hoping (I'm hoping)/And I'm dreaming of/The nice things (The nice things)/He'll say (He'll say)."

1937 ("Someday My Prince Will Come"): "Some day, my prince will come/Some day, we'll meet again/And away to his castle we'll go/To be happy forever, I know."

2025 ("Waiting on a Wish"): "I long to leave the walls behind me/Waiting on a wish/'Holding out for someday/Hoping somehow, some way/There comes a miracle to find me/I close my eyes and see/The girl I'm meant to be/Is she a part of me I've had to hide?/Wondering, "Will she appear?/Or will I spend another year/Waiting on a wish?"

Now, right off the bat, I would say that the 1937 lyrics aren't bad at all; She never wishes that the Prince will magically save her, she's just a 14-year-old dreaming about true love. That's cute. Thinking of all the nice things that could happen in romance isn't a sign of weakness or a lack of independence; it's sweet and romantic. It doesn't matter much what the 1937 one does either, 

• Dwarves (Dwarfs?)

Snow White sparked a larger conversation when actor Peter Dinklage, who has a form of dwarfism, thought bringing back the dwarfs in 2025 wasn't very cool and criticized them for remaking a "backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together." Other actors with dwarfism didn't necessarily agree, and it became quite a controversy.

I personally think that Disney had an original movie with the seven bandits, one of whom has dwarfism, and then got cold feet once people found that out and threw the OG dwarfs back in there, but as CGI abominations as to not cast an actual actor with dwafism and possibly offend Peter Dinklage. Or vice versa. This is also why the movie feels completely different depending on which ensemble we're dealing with and why the movie expected me to care about the seven thieves after cutting almost all of the scenes.

• Politics

Snow White also garnered lots of controversy because the two leads stood on opposite sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The political opinions of actors don't ultimately affect the quality of the product, so this controversy was stupid and is not an excuse for the movie's terribleness. 

• Review Bombing

Snow White suffered review bombing for every reason listed above. Review bombing does not affect the actual quality or box office success of the movie and is perpetuated by angry online trolls who use AI and bot accounts to artificially manipulate audience scores on sites like Rotten Tomatoes, YouTube, and IMDb. 

• Animal Cruelty

To avoid perpetuating animal cruelty, the huntsman does not place an animal's heart in the box given to him; instead, he uses an apple to trick the queen. This change was unnecessary since it's a fictional story about fictional people trying to kill each other with crossbows and arrows, so you have to depict some bad things happening. It's weird to cut out something that happens off-screen, but okay. Once Upon A Time did it better regardless.