The best thing that can be said for this current live-action version of “Snow White” which includes extensive CGI (e.g. all the dwarves), is that somewhere in Los Angeles or New York or Chicago, there are scenes that will be a treasure trove for drag queens and fans of campy parodies at small equity-waiver theaters. When that happens in Los Angeles, please invite me. In “Snow White,” the mix of CGI animals and humanoids doesn’t work, the production and costume design color scheme is often unbalanced and the new songs aren’t particularly memorable.

For people familiar with the 1937 Disney animated classic, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” there will be some familiar scenes, most of which worked better in animation. The story has been tweaked for modern sensibilities. And this likely accounts for the longer time and the awkward lack of flow.

The film begins with a hedgehog curled up on an ornate book and once opened the narrator (who will be revealed in the end), tells about a happy family of three: a king (Hadley Fraser), his wife–the queen (Lorena Andrea) and their only child, a daughter born during a heavy snow storm and thus named Snow White (Olivia Verrall as the baby Snow White). Snow White grows up (Emilia Faucher), but her mother dies. Her father remarries a sorceress, the unnamed Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). Snow White’s father takes off on a crusade but never returns, leaving the kingdom and Snow White at the mercy of the Evil Queen.

Snow White becomes a scullery maid, seen scrubbing, mopping and sweeping alone except for birds or cute fuzzy animals. During this time, in an empty pantry, she meets a thief, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap),  who steals very clean potatoes in a very clean and very empty pantry kitchen area. Jonathan, who lives in the forest and supposedly serves the true king, replaces the prince from the original story.

When Jonathan is caught and tied up to the iron bars, Snow White releases him. He reawakens her conscience and Snow White remembers that her father told her to be fearless, fair, brave and true. Those values are inscribed on a silver heart that her father left her (which you can buy online).

When the Evil Queen’s mirror (voiced by Patrick Page) tells her that Snow White is fairer than she, the queen has the Huntsman (Ansu Kabia) take Snow White to the old red apple orchard (which we saw previously during Snow White’s happy childhood) and kill her, bringing back her heart. The Huntsman tells Snow White to flee into the forest.

Being alone in the forest for someone who has lived all her life in the castle is frightening and many of the moments from the animated feature are re-created. The CGI animals lead Snow White to the cottage of the Dwarfs who are away at the mine. The Dwarfs find Snow White and, despite Grumpy’s objections, let her stay temporarily.

This version has Snow White meeting up with Jonathan and his gang  which includes Quigg (George Appleby), Farno (Colin Michael Carmichael), Scythe (Samuel Baxter), Finch (Jimmy Johnston), Maple (Dujonna Gift), Bingley (Idriss Kargbo), and Norwich (Jaih Betote).

Through their time spent avoiding the palace henchmen who are searching for Snow White and the thieves, Snow White and Jonathan will fall in love. Eventually, but not soon enough, Snow White will stand up to the queen and, of course, there will be a happily ever after.

The politics of the two leads aside, for a musical Rachel Zegler has a beautiful voice, but the same cannot be said for Gal Gadot. Gadot gives her songs lusty vocals and enough scene chewing to make this worthy of parody. Her clothes, makeup and clacking claws make seem ready for glamorous theatrical theft.

The Tony Award-winning Andrew Burlap is not a prince here although he has portrayed a king in the 2023 Broadway revival of the musical “Camelot.” TV viewers might be familiar with him from the 2022 FX limited series (on Hulu), “Under the Banner of Heaven” in which he played Joseph Smith. His voice is nice, but the new songs by Justin Paul, Benj Pasek and Jack Feldman are not inspiring.

Director Marc Webb has directed music videos and and I enjoyed his 2009 “(500) Days of Summer” and the 2017 “Gifted,” but here he hasn’t quite made movie magic. I don’t feel the chemistry between the two leads and the movie drags at some points. Mandy Moore’s choreography is serviceable but not as inspired as the recent “Wicked.”

There are some logic problems. The queen has an extensive banquet table of food set in one scene, but we never see the cooks and the bakers bustling about the pantry where Jonathan meets Snow White. Who is baking and cooking all that stuff? One has to wonder where all the food comes from if all the farmers and bakers have been conscripted into the army. We also do not see the royal household buzzing around our Evil Queen until a production musical number when several ladies-in-waiting pop up and just as quickly disappear.

The dwarfs are played by two people. They are voiced by one person, but the motion-capture puppeteer is someone else.

• Bashful (Tituss Burgess voice/Leah Haile puppeteer)
• Doc (Jeremy Swift voice/Jonathan Bourne puppeteer)
• Dopey (Andrew Barth Feldman voice/Jaih Betote puppeteer)
• Grumpy (Martin Klebba voice/Omari Bernard puppeteer)
• Happy (George Salazar voice/David Birch puppeteer)
• Sleepy (Andy Grotelueschen voice/Sandy Foster puppeteer)
• Sneezy (Jason Kravits voice/Dominic Owen puppeteer)

The Dwarfs in the animated feature are differentiated from the humans (Snow White, the Prince and the Evil Queen), by large exaggerated features and relative height. The same is true here, but there’s something odd about having a little person such as actor and stunt performer George Appleby in Jonathan’s band of merry men and having the CGI Dwarfs just as having real horses when the rest of the animals are CGI-animated. The CGI animals look decidedly more like caricatures than real representations of their furry counterparts. Somehow, this worked better in the CGI of the Planet of the Apes franchise which used CGI for the apes and real horses.

• Little People to Rally Outside of Disney Studios in Protest of Snow White Remake amid Outrage over Decision to Replace Titular Dwarfs with CGI…to ‘Avoid Reinforcing Stereotypes’ (17 March 2025) 
• Snow White Row: Actors with Dwarfism to Protest Outside Disney over ‘Unacceptable’ Remake (17 March 2025)

In this live-action feature, once Snow White wore her famous dress with a blue bodice with red accents and high white collar, the color balance within each frame becomes a problem. Her skirt is yellow, but a bright canary yellow.  It’s true that I often see children’s costumes with a bright yellow skirt so I wondered why this had not struck me while watching the animated feature.

Re-watching the 1937 film, I can see that the color balance is achieved by making Snow White’s Signature dress with a pale almond or vanilla yellow with shoes a slightly darker beige. What draws our attention up toward Snow White’s face is her bright red lips which are further framed by her dark red hair bow and matching red sleeve accents.

In the live-action feature, nothing shifts the attention away from that bright yellow skirt and giving Snow White red shoes doesn’t help tie in the top and the bottom for a cohesive look.

While I understand that the 1937 animated feature “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is dated in some of its values, the basic tale is dated as is the notions of the right to rule and monarchy–kings and queens, princes and princesses, if one believes in a democracy. I don’t think we should be afraid of our history, if we can discuss how it changed and why. We still can watch the 1942 “Holiday Inn” with blackface and the 1961 “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” with yellow face and be glad times have changed. I find both of these films cringe-worthy during those segments but this tells us something about the 1940s and 1960s.

If one wants to modernize the tale of Snow White, perhaps it is better to re-set it in contemporary times which has been done with Shakespeare. Zegler was in Steven Spielberg’s updated version of Oscar-winning “West Side Story.” And yet, think of how hurried that romance seems in comparison to this version of “Snow White.”

I prefer the original animated feature which is currently available to stream on Disney+ which only has a run time 83 minutes of compared to the 109 minutes of the live-action feature.

“Snow White” premiered in Spain on 12 March 2025 at the site that served as the original inspiration for the castle in the animated feature, Alcázar of Segovia. The US premiere was at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on 12 March 2025. The film will be released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures on 21 March 2025.