Main cast: Kristen Stewart (Snow White), Charlize Theron (Queen Ravenna), Chris Hemsworth (Eric the Huntsman), Sam Claflin (William), Sam Spruell (Finn), Ray Winstone (Gort), Nick Frost (Nion), Ian McShane (Beith), and Bob Hoskins (Muir)
Director: Rupert Sanders
I suppose it seemed like a good idea at first: take some commonly known fairy tales, give them a darker spin, that kind of thing. Snow White and the Huntsman is obviously based on – duh – the story of Snow White, but the heroine here goes from damsel in distress to warrior princess who leads the charge against her evil stepmother, Queen Ravenna. The Huntsman is given a bigger role here, while the seven dwarves have a more active role in the whole thing too, with personalities that are more gritty fantasy than Disney. Unfortunately, the movie turns out to be a plodding bore.
Okay, the story has many familiar elements. Snow White’s mother died when she was a young girl, and her father shortly after clashes with an army of unfriendly demons. King Magnus rescues a beautiful woman, Ravenna, whom he believes to be a prisoner of those demons. Because Ravenna is hot, he marries her and happily mounts her on the wedding day, only to get a knife in his chest from his new wife – Ravenna is actually the boss of those demons. She throws Snow White into the dungeons and brings her brother Finn to be her right-hand man. When she’s not being the head bitch in charge, Ravenna devours the essence of younger women to stay gorgeous and beautiful, all the while hissing without irony that men are such beasts because they feed on a woman’s beauty and then discard her when she’s no longer in her prime.
Snow White eventually hai-ya‘s her way out of the dungeon, and the angry Queen sends Thor, er, Eric the Huntsman to go get her, in exchange for resurrecting Eric’s dead wife. Eric soon decides to help Snow White anyway because Ravenna is one lying hag, and she also gets dwarves and her childhood boyfriend William on her side. Ravenna is not pleased, as you can imagine, because her magic mirror warns her that Snow White’s “innocence and purity” would be Ravenna’s undoing. Purity, my ass. Snow White has, like two boyfriends and 500 men all lusting after her… oops, wrong movie. Anyway, you’d think Ravenna would just order a gag of strippers and throw them at Snow White, hoping that at least one of them would help be rid of her innocence and purity, but no. Bring on that apple trick instead!
Snow White and the Huntsman is a beautiful movie, but all those expensive CGI stuff can only do so much before I begin to look at my watch and wonder why I’m still watching this dreadfully boring movie. And it’s boring. Everything moves so slowly, and so much time is spent on allowing Charlize Theron to snarl and hiss in a slow, eye-rollingly theatrical manner. Kristen Stewart is probably the most joyless actress out there at the moment – she sports such a resting bitch face throughout the whole thing that I feel like I’m in pain just watching her. Her Snow White behaves like she’s merely being inconvenienced by the events befalling her and she’d like everything to be over ASAP so that she can go back to sleep. Clearly, she’s saving all her passion for the behind-the-scenes moments with the director, if you know what I mean.
As for Chris Hemsworth, he is the kind of actor who is only worth watching if he is wearing as little clothing as possible, or having on-screen hate sex with Loki. Sure, he has a nice smile, but if I want that, I can just download a photo of him as my computer wallpaper. Unfortunately, he is not delivering much other than cardboard cutout realness here.
The dwarves are fine, and it’s great that the creepiest one bites the dust before he starts to really irritate me, but that’s about it. Oh yes, the love interest, William. I’m sure Sam Claflin is a nice guy, but that haircut and the pancake make-up make him look more like Snow White’s gay personal hair stylist than hot boyfriend.
Much of Snow White and the Huntsman is the same old stuff being rehashed in a pace that is twice as slow, and all-around uninspired acting by the main cast only adds to the tedium. This one can get lost in the woods or choke on an apple for all I care. I’m just glad that it’s over and I can pick up my life again.
