Mirror Mirror (2012)

Stars: Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer, Nathan Lane, Jordan Prentice, Mark Povinelli, Joe Gnoffo, Danny Woodburn, Sebastian Saraceno, Martin Klebba, Ronald Lee Clark, Mare Winningham, Sean Bean
Director: Tarsem Singh Dhandwar

Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Drama

Rating: B-

The first of the two feature films on the legend of Snow White, Mirror Mirror is an attempt to reimagine the story in a feminine world while remaining child friendly.  This whole idea, or at least the reimaging portion of it, is a common theme in current retellings of Snow White, to the point that it’s pushing becoming a cliché (and will definitely achieve such a status by the end of the year, what with the two Snow White movies coming out and the Snow White television show on ABC).  My problem with Mirror Mirror is that in its reimaging it really loses elements of the original story.  I like the idea of an action girl Snow White, who is as eager to fight the evil queen alongside her prince and the dwarves, but I still want the poison apples and true loves kiss and what not.

The story is such: Once upon a time there was a young girl, Snow White (Collins), who had a wonderful father, the King (Bean), but no mother.  One day her father marries again, so as to give his daughter a mother.  But the new Queen (Roberts) is somewhat of a wicked stepmother; more concerned with maintaining her beauty and power than anything else.  The King eventually goes off to fight a great evil, from which he never returns, leaving the power to rule in the Queen’s hands.  She essentially locks Snow up in the castle, forbidding her to leave, and taxes the country into destitution.  Snow finally comes to her senses and realizes that she should stand up for her people… causing the Queen to get a henchman (Lane) to kill her; he fails to do so, and Snow ends up moving in with seven dwarfs (Prentice, Povinelli, Gnoffo, Woodburn, Saraceno, Klebba, and Clark), who teach her their banditry ways and provide her with room and board, in exchange for her far superior cooking.  Oh, and also, there’s a Prince (Hammer), who is being pursued by the Queen despite his strong attraction to Snow.  Sound familiar?

The highlight of this film is the dwarfs, which I think is a bit typical of a Snow White film.  They don’t sing and dance, but they do provide a good comic relief for the film.  They are, if not in name than in essence, Teacher, Grumpy, Weird, Gay (or European?), Pervy, Hungry, and Giggles.  Each one is a very unique character and while they don’t really get much individual development in the film they do more than just push the plot forward.  Even during the obligatory montage they interact with Snow in a way that is unique unto them.  It takes awhile for Snow herself to become a strong character, but as she begins to escape from the Queen’s hold she begins to show her independence.  She never descends into the damsel in distress category, even when she is in a distressful position.  The Queen is far less evil than in other depictions, although she is a bit flat.  Her motivation really is the desire to stay beautiful, and the way in which her magic works isn’t really explained.  The world that she travels to in order to get to her magic mirror is cool, as is the being inside of it, but the whole aspect isn’t really developed.  The consequences of her using magic aren’t fully explained either, just ominously threatened.  The idea in itself, however, is rather clichéd, so I guess it doesn’t really need to be further developed.  In some ways, the Prince is more villainous than the Queen.  Like Snow he has to go through some development, but in the beginning of the film he is pretty much everything that you would expect of a fairytale Prince Charming: attractive, daring, charming, conceited, and totally sexist.  He does grow and realize the error of his personality, and it is that development that is one of the few surprising moments of the movie.  That being said, however, while Mirror Mirror is a bit predictable, and doesn’t fully embrace the elements of the classic story, it is still a fun movie and, I suspect probably the best Snow White movie to come out this year.