Snow White (2025)
Directed by: Marc Webb
Premise: A remake of Disney’s 1937 animated film. A sorcerer (Gal Gadot) becomes queen of a fairytale kingdom. Her stepdaughter (Rachel Zegler) flees for her life and encounters a group of seven dwarfs.
What Works: 2025’s Snow White is yet another attempt by Disney to exploit its catalog of animated classics following remakes of The Jungle Book, Cinderella, The Lion King, Dumbo, and The Little Mermaid. In most cases the filmmakers altered and expanded the story to add some novelty to the new version. Snow White is partly successful at that. Disney has moved away from the classic princess paradigm of a damsel saved by a prince. Snow White gives the title character moments that demonstrate agency and compassion. The people of the kingdom are suffering because the evil queen has horded all the wealth and the conflict takes on a larger significance. Rachel Zegler is cast as Snow White and she does well in the role. She’s a capable singer and Zegler and the filmmakers balance vulnerability with volition in a way that’s humanizing. Gal Gadot plays the evil queen and Gadot is effectively threatening. The production design of Snow White is mixed but the fairytale world is usually convincing. Some of the other live action Disney remakes looked like theme park attractions but the fairytale world of Snow White has a credible look.
What Doesn’t: The first half of Snow White is stronger than the second half. The key flaw is the dwarfs. Everyone else in the movie is played by flesh and blood actors but the dwarfs have been created digitally. The dwarfs are never convincing and they look like garden gnomes that have come to life. Like it’s predecessor, the 2025 version of Snow White is a musical but none of the new songs are memorable. “All is Fair” is supposed to be Gadot’s big villain number but it falls flat. The direction of the musical set pieces is often leaden and clunky; there’s no musicality to the filmmaking. This version of Snow White steps back from romance but it’s an overcorrection. Snow White and her love interest lack romantic chemistry and Andrew Burnap’s character is a generic and boring fairytale hero, the kind of character that Shrek satirized. In expanding the story, some elements from the 1937 film don’t make sense. The queen’s transformation into an old crone who gives Snow White the poisoned apple comes across superfluous and incidental; the whole sequence could be cut out of the movie without changing anything. And that’s the central problem of this version of Snow White. The transition from animation to live action loses the whimsy and charm that distinguished the 1937 film.
Bottom Line: Like many Disney remakes, the 2025 version of Snow White isn’t bad but it is unnecessary and redundant. Unless you’re a Disney completists, there’s no reason to watch it when you could just view the 1937 version instead.
Episode: #1041 (March 30, 2025)