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Disney\u2019s new \u201cSnow White\u201d is perfectly adequate, though the scene when our heroine stands alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chanting \u201cno justice, no peace\u201d did admittedly give me pause. Yes, this live-action redo of its 1937 feature-length animated film has been called out as woke, but by the end, the overall damage from Snow White\u2019s liberation struggle proves minimal. She still smiles and sings, whistles and works, rejects evil and rescues seven potential incels. Snow White no longer trills about a prince, true, but heteronormativity still has its happy ending. Huzzah!<\/p>\n
If somehow you\u2019ve missed the most maddening of the nitwit controversies that have been swirling around Disney\u2019s latest remake, good for you for having a life. It is \u2014 and has been \u2014 a dispiritingly familiar spectacle of bigotry and rank nonsense, with the ugliest twittering centered on the casting of the young Latina actress Rachel Zegler (\u201cWest Side Story\u201d), who wasn\u2019t deemed pale enough by trolls to play the title role. Of course the 1937 character is animated and she doesn\u2019t look white as snow, either, because people don\u2019t unless they\u2019re in whiteface.<\/p>\n
Criticisms of Disney aren\u2019t new, of course, and have reliably come from film critics as well as pundits from both sides of the political spectrum. Disney\u2019s \u201cAladdin\u201d (1992) ushered in a new age of princess diversity with an Arabian royal named Jasmine, but the film itself fumbled representationally. Critics slammed some of its images as well as song lyrics<\/a> that were excised from later editions of the movie. As Disney expanded its princess portfolio, it continued to generate praise and criticism for both avoiding and sometimes reinforcing<\/a> stereotypes, including in \u201cThe Princess and the Frog\u201d (2009), which showcased its first Black princess.<\/p>\n The Snow White in the new movie isn\u2019t coded as anything other than sweet and spunky. Like her predecessors, she comes with the usual princess prerequisites: a royal patrimony, a dead mother, a killer stepmom and a guy waiting, at times riding in from the wings on a white horse. As in the original film \u2014 the studio\u2019s first full-length animated feature \u2014 this Snow White is born to a King and Queen who are expediently sidelined. The Evil Queen (as she\u2019s called), who\u2019s played by Gal Gadot with less animation than the typical cartoon royal, talks into a mirror and doesn\u2019t like what she hears. She subsequently makes life miserable for Snow White, who remains spirited enough to sing while mopping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Zegler has enough charm and lung power to hold the center of this busy, overproduced movie with its mix of memorable old and unmemorable new songs. Directed by Marc Webb and written by Erin Cressida Wilson, Snow White 2.0 dusts off Disney\u2019s take on the Grimm fairy tale, modernizes it with girl empowerment and tosses in a bit of \u201cLes Mis\u201d-style storm-the-barricades uplift. Oddly, while the prince in the first film shows up only near the start and end, Zegler\u2019s Snow White has to deal more forcefully with her insipid love interest, presumably to pad the story. He\u2019s a smiler, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who\u2019s been demoted to a commoner and leads a merry band of dancing-and-singing thieves.<\/p>\n One of the more striking things about the 1937 film is that as the title \u201cSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs\u201d suggests, the story largely concerns her relationship with the seven miners. Some friendly critters guide Snow White to the miners\u2019 storybook cottage where she bustles about, cleaning and cooking for Doc, Sneezy and the rest. In effect, before she can have her happily ever after, she continues practicing the housekeeping skills she honed under her stepmother to become a mother-wife to some unthreatening male companions. Shortly after the original Doc says to \u201csearch every cook and nanny,\u201d the old Snow White cheerfully steps into those roles. The new Snow White, not so much.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Well, that\u2019s progress, I guess, though it\u2019s also true that Disney\u2019s remakes often introduce new problems. That\u2019s teeth-grindingly true here of the dwarf characters, whose bodies were created with a combination of<\/a> performance capture, puppetry and computer generated imagery, using actors to voice them. The results are, er, grim. The delicate, flowing lines of the original\u2019s animation style softened every edge to beautiful effect and made even potentially scary moments inviting for tots. The eerie photorealistic look in the redo, by contrast, emphasizes every craggy line and tumescently bulbous nose; weirdly, Grumpy (voiced by Martin Klebba) looks like a ragged, very angry Dermot Mulroney.<\/p>\n