★★★

Somewhere between ‘poisoned apple’ and ‘fairest of them all’ lies a more nuanced assessment of Marc Webb’s Snow White than that widely available online. The film may not quite achieve irrefutable greatness but there’s certainly nothing here so insidious as to warrant the torrent of bad press that currently haunts the film. Snow White is, by all accounts, perfectly pleasant. It’s well cast, vibrantly hued and rousingly scored. In a Disney remake canon that also includes Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio and 2016 stinker Alice Through the Looking Glass, this one does nice business.

Of course, Snow White has always courted skepticism. It was not for nothing that Walt’s 1937 original was gifted the moniker ‘Disney’s folly’ by contemporaries. And yet, by virtue of a certain clarity of vision and morality, the tale endures. In some respects, Snow White is almost too well known for the remake treatment. It’s no mean feat for Webb and company to excite the imagination when the tune and beat are so well versed. Even with modernising revisions from screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson – Snow needs no Prince to save the day and is now named for the blizzard she was born in, rather than the colour of her skin – it’s familiar stuff, stretched twenty-odd minutes with new songs and a little more effort in the romancing department. True love must earn his kiss. It’s a consent thing.

Rachel Zegler – Spielberg’s Maria – is 2025’s Snow White, bringing the same sort of effortless enchantment that Lily James delivered Kenneth Branagh for 2015’s Cinderella and rather more gumption than Adriana Caselotti’s original princess. Zegler’s Snow White still wishes on a well but with a mite more frustration than was the case ninety-eight years ago. An opening sprawl expands upon the original in depicting the passing of Snow’s mother (Lorena Andrea), her replacement by a new Queen (Gal Gadot) and the disappearance of her father (Hadley Fraser) to fend off supposed threats to the southern lands. Snow is left to servitude with her wicked stepmother stealing all joy from the kingdom on usurping the throne.

If Zegler is living her best princess life, dancing through the glades and charming the birds from the trees, this is nothing on the whale of a time being had by Gadot. The one time Wonder Woman chews through the castle scenery with camp abandon as her Evil Queen bedazzles the screen in a series of loud Sandy Powell gowns. If there’s a sequin left in Pinewood, it’s fallen from Gadot, whose musical number proves a veritable rampage. This is ‘All is Fair,’ one of six new songs penned by Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Zegler’s big number – ‘Waiting on a Wish’ – may prove a little rote but there are some catchy tunes amid the rest. Real Broadway vibes. Successful updates to ‘Heigh-Ho’ and ‘Whistle While You Work,’ meanwhile, deliver a pair of thoroughly enjoyable set pieces.

Which brings us to the matter of Snow White’s seven dwarfs, here re-branded as ‘magical creatures’. Hm. Transparently spooked by the potential for political ramification, Disney have opted to cast neither actors with dwarfism nor the able-bodied as Snow’s trusty companions, instead plumping for a septet of computer generated horrors likely to appeal to none. The rendering itself is expensively lifelike but they’re an oddly weightless crew and unsettling in appearance. What’s more, Webb isn’t so able as was Walt to gift each character a uniquely gregarious personality and so most fade into background dressing. Jonathan Swift makes for a squeaky Doc, while Andrew Barth Feldman is an endearing Dopey, even if Wilson finds herself terribly tongue tied when trying to assert that he is not, in fact, ‘a dope’.

Beyond the dwarf misstep, Snow White is an attractively fantastical affair, bathed from top to bottom in golden, honeyed hues. Certainly, after two naturalistic Lion King remakes, it’s almost refreshing to find a Disney film that embraces the absurdity of anthropomorphic animals via an abandonment of excessive realism. One would struggle to find anything in Snow White that is excessively realistic – or even partially. Even the costumes channel fancy dress chic.

That Snow White will bomb owes more, then, to the financial excesses pummelled in than the product peddled out. It’s a slight picture, sure, but ably led by Zegler and neatly unambitious in its messaging. One for the young but no bad way to spend a couple of hours for the rest of us, those less hindered by fits of the grumpy at any rate.

T.S.