Before we get to the actual film, a discussion is in order about the off-screen political, social and corporate problems that helped it on its way to the box-office disaster it is turning out to be. I’ll be brief.
First, Rachel Zegler, in the title role, has been a vocal advocate of the Palestinians in Gaza, while co-star Gal Gadot is a loyal Israeli who has served in the IDF. They don’t much like each other. Second, Zegler’s casting has been criticized for her not being “white” enough for the role (she’s Latina). How petty can you get?
Then there are the issues of passing over legitimate small-person actors to portray the seven dwarfs in favor of grotesque CGI monstrosities (I swear Dopey is played by Alfred E. Neuman). There’s more, like a made-up concept called “anti-woke backlash,” but you’re already bored.
So now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can talk about the movie. It is of course the latest, I think 14th, cash-grab in the Mouse House’s string of awkward and charmless live action “reimaginings” of its animated classics. This is what a formerly creative studio does when it runs out of ideas.
But the good news is… wait, there is no good news. This is a terrible film. Zegler is a talented vocalist, as she proved in the recent West Side Story remake, and again here. And she’s plucky, even when having an apparent bad hair month. I searched long and hard for the right word to describe her portrayal as Ms. White and came up with “cloying” (though that may be redundant when describing a Disney princess).
Gal Gadot is a tall, sensuous woman. But she proved in Wonder Woman that she can’t act, and here she demonstrates rather embarrassingly that she can’t sing either. Then there’s the nondescript woodsman hero (not Prince Charming this time, again for cultural reasons) who is apparently willing to kiss what he has been told is a corpse. Dude comes off as an incel stalker.
Bottom line: a cluttered, magic-free and poorly paced bit of lazy filmmaking with some forgettable new tunes that will bore your socks off, unless you’re seven. Go watch the 1937 original. (109 min)
