Cinema review: Snow White and the Huntsman

Snow White.

The second “unconventional movie adaption of the classic Snow White fable” of the year.  Yes of course it’s simply a coincidence, Hollywood is such a creative place that they don’t really need to copy other people ideas, do they?

Jokes aside this was actually fun. Two wildly different takes, because for once they are really diverse, separated by just a couple of months, they beg for a comparison but before getting to it let’s consider this movie on this own.

Plot wise this is a case of too many cooks. Universal reportedly paid 3.2 million for the screenplay before setting two different screenwriters on remaking it. Official sources say that 40% of the screenplay came up during these rewrites so they paid more than three million for practically half a screenplay. Amazing.

It’s easy to see the scars on the butchered plot. Countless things are incredibly important for the first 30 minutes before getting lost in the shuffle. Romance subplots disappear randomly, the Mcguffin is forgotten just before the end, the dwarves appearance clashes so much tone wise with the rest of the movie that you could smell bad test screening all across the Atlantic.

Then at least is a pretty movie. First timer Rupert Sanders was given the keys to the kingdom, 170 million has been spent on this movie, but he used the money wisely. The locations, the costumes, the CGI, are all very pretty. The overall tone is really darker, with some interesting choices. The mirror in particular, is spot on.

Kristen Stewart looks good in the part. She is still very Bella Swan, but this is more the fault of the director than hers. All the actors didn’t perform very well here. Chris Hemsworth for example is really terrible; it’s hard to believe he is the same guy who did so well with Kenneth Branagh guidance.

The only exception is Charlize Theron. I used to dislike her; she’s always been stunning of course but never impressed me with any of her capabilities. Here she quite literally steals the movie. She finds a way of delivering, a peculiar kind of speech that is amazing.

She succeeds in quite an hard task, trough an amazing performance she manage to elevate an inane and terribly written role and make it her own.

As to the above mentioned comparison movie wise Mirror Mirror is better but this one certainly got the best evil queen.

Conclusion: An average movie brought up by the sheer amount of money that they spent into it and a very good performance from Charlize Theron.