Movie Review: ‘Snow White’ is no poisoned apple but it doesn’t whistle

It’s a tricky thing reworking a fable that’s been around two centuries, and that’s doubly true when leaping from the two-dimensional fantasy realm of animation to the more complicated land of flesh and bone.

It’s a tricky thing reworking a fable that’s been around two centuries, and that’s doubly true when leaping from the two-dimensional fantasy realm of animation to the more complicated land of flesh and bone.

Marc Webb’s “Snow White” has been a veritable case study for the headaches that can arise when a window into the real world is cracked open. Everything from Israel’s war in Gaza (Rachel Zegler and her co-star Gal Gadot, who plays the wicked stepmother, have differing opinions), the humanity of little people (there’s a reason “and the Seven Dwarfs” has been stripped from the title) and the alleged “woke”-ness of the production have been fuel for what we can gently refer to as online debate.

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Despite some gloriously lush production design, “Snow White” — innocent of most of those backlashes though not all — can’t quite thread the needle. Even the new songs (by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul) that are good struggle to fit in alongside old standbys. Zegler does a spirited job remaking a classic Disney princess into a more modern woman; when she sings, the movie gets a lift.

But like scaffolding that’s been left up too long, the strain of renovation shows in Webb’s film, particularly in its awkward handling of Dopey, Sneezy and company. The seven dwarfs, like the fawns and squirrels, are rendered in CGI.

Erin Cressida Wilson’s screenplay remakes Snow White’s story as less a princess awaiting her Prince Charming than an heir to a throne who loses her gumption. Though taught as a child to be “fair” as a leader by her father king (Hadley Fraser), Snow White has lost any ambition by the time Gadot’s Evil Queen takes over the kingdom.

Gadot sinks her teeth into the Evil Queen, a spikey, slinky villain who moves with a metallic rustle. But she feels cut off from the movie, without the lines that would elevate her flamboyant performance into something memorable. The prince has been altogether scrubbed; instead Andrew Burnap plays the bandit Jonathan who encourages Snow White not to wait for her father’s rescue.

Presumably one of the reasons to bring actors into remakes of animated classics would be to add a warm-blooded pulse to these characters. Zegler manages that, but everyone else in “Snow White” — mortal or CGI — is as stiff as could be.