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Snow White (2025) – Film Review

Cast: Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Andrew Burnap, Ansu Kabia, Patrick Page, Andrew Barth Feldman, Tituss Burgess, Martin Klebba, Jason Kravits, George Salazar, Jeremy Swift, Andy Grotelueschen

Director: Marc Webb

Synopsis: After her evil stepmother usurps the throne, a young princess must join forces with seven dwarves to save her people…

Review: Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work Disney goes as the House of Mouse continues to beaver away in its mission to remake all its animated classics. While some live-action remakes have breathed new life into the classic stories on which they are based, others have felt like soulless cash grabs with no reason to justify their existence other than to use audiences’ nostalgia to print money. It was therefore only a matter of time before attention was turned towards remaking the first animated film Disney ever made, the first animated film to be produced in the United States and one of the most influential animated films of all time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

In the same vein as the previous reinterpretations, the story’s core remains the same as its animated predecessor. During a fierce snowstorm, the king and queen of a benevolent kingdom welcome their daughter – Snow White – into the world. Her name is in honour of the wintry weather during the night she was born. After the tragic death of her mother, her father remarries another woman and quickly rushes off to see to an urgent matter he never returns from. The new Queen seizes the throne for herself, and her vanity causes the lives of her citizens to quickly take a turn for the worse, while Snow White is forced to become a servant. After being told that Snow White is the fairest of them all, the Queen furiously orders her huntsman to kill Snow White, causing her to flee the kingdom, where she runs into the forest and meets and befriends the seven dwarves.

Magic mirror on the wall, does this latest live-action remake bring anything new or noteworthy to the table at all? It is slim pickings, however despite all the absurd, and let’s be honest racist and sexist backlash that has come her way ever since she was cast, Zegler delivers a beautiful portrayal of the titular princess. She is given more agency and independence and is not simply reduced to waiting for her Prince Charming to swoop in and save her. Like her animated counterpart, she possesses a kind heart and compassion for the kingdom’s other citizens, which is timely and pertinent given the poisonous hate dominating too much of modern discourse. As well as new iterations of “Whistle While You Work” and “Heigh-Ho”, it also includes new songs to further emphasise Snow White’s independence including “Waiting on a Wish” penned by Oscar-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, which gives Zegler a chance to show her incredible singing ability.

However, despite Zegler giving everything she has in this role and hitting all the right notes, everything around her possibly took a bite out of a poisoned apple as it doesn’t match up to her performance. Aside from the aforementioned changes to Snow White’s character, Erin Cressida Wilson’s script mostly sticks to the original source material, namely the 1812 fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. However, in place of the handsome Prince Charming, her love interest is now in the form of the leader of a group of bandits named Jonathan (Burnap), who is looking to rebel against the tyrannical Evil Queen. The film allows time for their romance to blossom, and their chemistry is sincere. Unfortunately, Burnap’s performance lacks sufficient charisma to differentiate him from any would-be love interests looking to win the princess’s heart.

Talking of someone looking to ~~win~~ cut out the princess’s heart, Gal Gadot looks the part of the Evil Queen, in no small part due to the excellent costume design by the legendary Sandy Powell. However, elegant costumes cannot hide the reality that Gadot’s performance is so painfully wooden that you may wonder if she was mistakenly on the set of another live-action reimagining of Pinocchio. It does not even bear thinking about. Furthermore, her singing may give you flashbacks to a certain viral video. As if a flat and dull villain wasn’t enough, to add further insult to injury, the dwarves are ghastly CGI abominations with none of the charm that their animated counterparts had. The debate raged as to whether the film should have opted to use real-life actors, and while it was a case of damned if they did and damned if they didn’t, these magical creatures are nightmare fuel personified.

Despite some solid production design, this feels inadequate for the House of Mouse, especially given the reported production budget of between $240 million to $270 million, especially as not even such a large budget can hide some very apparent green screen for those scenes in that not-so-magical woodland. Marc Webb has proven himself to be a talented director, but the whole film has a very directed-by-committee feel to it and pales in comparison to certain other musicals that have graced the big screen in recent times. You would hope this might give Disney pause to reconsider its plans to remake all its films and instead return to crafting original stories and reminding audiences of bringing the magic that they are more than capable of. Yet, even with this setback, the live-action remake train unfortunately shows no sign of stopping.