I am very conflicted about this movie; there are certain elements in it that deliver that wow factor and really draw you into the story and the characters, but then moments later, something pops up that just ruins the suspension of disbelief and jolts you back to reality. I guess it boils down to the fact that the movie tries to do a lot of different things, but never really excels at any of them, which is sad since you can easily see the potential this had to become a classic.
Snow White and the Huntsman is an action oriented retelling of the original classic Snow White and the 7 Dwarves. Snow White’s father is wooed and betrayed by an evil queen (Charlize Theron, enjoying her role a bit too much) who then dominates the land with an iron fist and steals the life force of beautiful damsels in order to stay young and beautiful. For reasons unknown, the Queen does not kill Snow White, instead locking her in the dungeon where she is forgotten until years later when the magic mirror pronounces Snow White (Kristen Stewart, who apparently found it too inconvenient to learn an accent or how to act with her mouth closed) the ‘fairest of them all’. Snow White escapes in order to save her life and hides from the Queen’s pursuers in the Dark Woods, a place even evil minions apparently fear to tread. Enter Chris Hemsworth as the drunken Huntsman who is ordered to track down Snow White in exchange for the return of his wife, whose resurrection has been promised as his reward. Needless to say, he tracks her down, learns the Queen plans to betray him, so now it is up to him, the 7 Dwarves and a member of a rebel faction to safely bring Snow White to the rebel camp because she is ‘The One’ who will lead them into victorious battle against the Queen’s army.
I do want to note that this film does some things very well. For starters, it is absolutely beautiful to watch! The sets are extraordinarily well done and the costumes are great. The special effects are fun and top notch, especially the way they perform the changing ages of the Queen. The handling of the Dark Forest is wonderful, and the mythology behind the Queen and why she is constantly looking for ‘the fairest of them all’ is a fun change from simple vanity. Chris Hemsworth does a good job, (and yes, ladies and those so inclined, there is a brief scene were he has his shirt mosty off) and Kristen Stewart doesn’t have too many lines, so you don’t have to hear her speak that much
That said, the rest of the film suffers from being a muddled mess. It’s as of the screen writers couldn’t decide what kind of movie to make, so they just took a bunch of pieces of movies they liked, and stitched them together into a resulting Frankenstein’s monster. Throughout you’ll see glimpses of Willow, the Princess Bride, Fern Gully, Princess Mononoke (that is COMPLETELY shot for shot ripped off in a critical scene), Lord of the Rings and The Matrix; not to mention the dwarves who first appear dressed as Ewoks and then (I swear!) start humming the theme music to Titanic around a campfire. Oh, that’s right, the dwarves. I am completely baffled why they superimposed the faces of Nick Frost, Bob Hoskins and other actors over the bodies of little people to play the dwarves. Were there no little people available for the roles? Was Peter Dinklage throwing a party or something? Seriously, every time one of them were on screen, it jarred me out of the experience. There was no rhyme or reason for this change. Oh, and it’s too bad Kristen Stewart wasn’t able to watch the recent Game of Thrones episode to see how a REAL Braveheart speech should be given, as hers lacked any and all emotion and would have done more to drive the troops home than rally them.
If you can survive all of the above and get over the horrible acting (Kristen Stewart, please stop), the overacting (Charlize Theron), the disjointed plot, anti-climactic finale, horrible writing and try to focus on the few gems hidden throughout this movie, you’ll enjoy it a lot more than many other ‘date’ movies you could get dragged to. You will probable leave wondering, just as I did, what COULD have been and what happened to make everything go so wrong.