Snow White and the Huntsman

What is it about Kristen
Stewart that resists interesting and proactive heroines? While not nearly as
mopey and passive as the insufferably indecisive Bella Swan, her revisionist Snow
White is two hours of yet more earnest blandness and pained grimaces. To
quote a far better film, “Why so serious?”

With nary an ounce of pluck,
ferocity or humor to be found, Evan Daugherty and John Lee Hancock’s aimless
and overstuffed screenplay does the young actress no favors. As written, Snow
makes exactly two choices in the film: to escape imprisonment at the beginning
and to attack her wicked stepmother at the end. In between, she stumbles from
one stunning landscape to the next, frowning and fretting as men either hunt,
protect or adore her. Maybe this is another installment in the Twilight series after all.

The screenwriters should have
taken a page from 1997’s Ever After, in which Drew Barrymore’s Snow
actually had a thought in her head and some plausible skill with a sword. You
know Snow White and the Huntsman is in trouble when you find yourself
praying that Charlize Theron’s evil queen shows up again soon to drain another
victim of her soul.

And seriously, Kristen
Stewart versus Charlize Theron? Trolls, fairies and Ian McShane as a dwarf
aside, the most outlandish conceit in first-time director Rupert Sanders’ film
is that there is even a question as to who would emerge from that contest the
victor.

Like a psychopathic Grace
Kelly, Theron’s Queen Ravenna is dangerously gorgeous and impossibly regal.
With her ice-chilling smile and deadly stare, she uses what little screen time
she has to reduce Stewart’s meager appeal to a dramatic whimper. It’s not a
great part (again, look to Ever After for Sigourney Weaver’s richly
conceived wicked stepmom), and the screenwriters lock her in a tower for most
of the film to play drag queen dress-up, but at least the movie crackles with
energy and intensity whenever Theron’s on screen.

Snow White starts on solid enough ground, with Ravenna murdering
the king, seizing the crown, and imprisoning Snow. Her motives are vaguely
feminist in nature, and there’s some hope that Sanders seeks to explore female
empowerment through that most disempowering of genres — the classic fairy tale.
As Snow matures into womanhood and escapes her tower cell into a visually
striking Dark Forest, things look promising indeed.

It’s surprising then how
quickly the film squanders its good premise for formulaic and unfocused
storytelling. Mixing a dull Tolkienesque odyssey with Game of Thrones politics, this underheated but overdesigned fantasy-adventure gives you nothing
you haven’t seen before — only worse. There’s barely a romance to speak of,
very little action, and its emotions are relentlessly pitched somewhere between
melancholy and brooding. By the time Stewart is called upon to deliver her
final battle St. Crispin’s-style speech, the preview audience was chuckling
with derision.

Sanders proves himself to be
yet another director of commercials who knows how to compose astonishing images
but struggles with flaccid pacing, erratic performances and chaotic action
scenes.

Chris Hemsworth, taking time off from being Thor, injects
a little gruff charisma into the film as the mercenary huntsman who ends up
changing his heart. But his character is too flat and disposable to compensate
for the leaden storytelling and clunky dialogue. The less said of great actors
Ray Winstone, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones and Nick Frost playing dwarves, the
better.

Snow White and the
Huntsman sells itself as a bold
retelling of a classic fable, where the beautiful princess takes up arms and
seizes her own destiny, but delivers a enchantingly dull story in which Snow
White’s strength and specialness are continually spoken of but rarely shown.
The movie offers few thrills but will provide some great screen-savers.

This article appears in May 30 – Jun 5, 2012.