This past Saturday, I bought into the hype machine and went to see Snow White and the Huntsman with my wife, starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and Chris Hemsworth. First off, how has Chris Hemsworth not been in more movies? The guy is great. And I had NO IDEA that he was Kirk’s father in the new Star Trek until I pulled up his IMDB page, but I digress.
In the past few years, the fairy tale genre has been a hot commodity, provided you get a good story: Alice in Wonderland, Mirror, Mirror, and all the Cinderella movies for the Disney franchise, so Universal decides to stick its toe in the fairy tale genre with three hot actors and see what the result would be. What I saw was not your mother’s Snow White, let me tell you. Not that this was a bad thing, in all aspects.
First off, we know that the Evil Queen does not like Snow White because she is “fairer than the queen”, but we do not know why that was so important to the queen. Charlize Theron (best known for her Oscar award winning performances in North Country and Monster, as well as The Astronaut’s Wife, Hancock, and many, many, many other movies) played the queen to a tee in this movie. The first time you see her in the movie, you have a small bit of sympathy for her. But that sympathy soon fades as the evil queen (named Ravenna in this incantation) rears her head and begins to show what she must do to stay in control.
Then there is Snow. Oh, poor, innocent, pitiful, sweet Snow. *snortchortle* Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. This was one of the places where I had problems with the movie. (SPOILER ALERT) I know that it was put there to drive the movie, but do you really think that a girl with a “heart as pure as snow” would scratch someone with a rusty nail just to escape from her prison cell? And while we are talking about things that are as “pure as snow”, how did a solid white horse just “end up” laying in a cleft of a rock break just waiting for Snow to happen by and hop on him and ride off? I mean, come on, really? Kristen Stewart (known from the Twilight franchise) did her best to play the character of a girl that it seemed everyone was trying to either kill or follow, there was no middle ground. She does fairly respectably, but it felt like she was trying to play Bella lost in the big bad woods trying to find Edward or Jacob and not to get to the duke (which was her main objective).
The final “main” character is the “Huntsman”, since he was never officially given a name other than Huntsman, played by Chris Hemsworth (of Thor, The Avengers, and his reallllllll small part in Star Trek, along with four other movies to date). Hemsworth played a lovable drunk that you ended up wanting to win (which I don’t know if that is a good thing or not: the lovable drunk part, that is). First time you see him he is crashing through a wall, drunk out of his mind, fighting with a man that he owed money to. (He narrates the film, as well. Accent is awesome, helps to keep things moving, but again, I digress). Come to find out he is a widower, which is part of the reason he drinks. As I mentioned in the opening, I am trying to figure out why Hemsworth has not been in more movies, because his presence on the screen is amazing. He also helps to “mop up” the mess that Stewart makes with her Bella routine, as best he can.
Finally, we come to the seven supporting characters that you come to expect in a Snow White movie: I am speaking, of course, of the animals!!! *ducks thrown tomato* Sorry, again, couldn’t help myself. Universal again went out of their way to get a few A-list actors to play the dwarfs, with Bob Hoskins (Hook, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), and Ian McShane (Pirates: On Stranger Tides, and the TV Shows Deadwood and Kings) leading the people that I recognized right off. The dwarfs were not the typical “whistle while you work” dwarfs that you saw in the Disney films. Instead, these dwarfs are more like robbers and thieves and drunks than anything.
The plot of the movie was pretty straight forward: Queen doesn’t like that Snow was “fairer” than her so she has to kill her, Snow escapes, Queen sends Huntsman after Snow, Huntsman lets Snow live, Snow comes back and battles Queen, the end. As I have pointed out earlier, there are some issues with writing that I think were just put in the movie for plot’s sake, and if you leave them out, the movie would have been able to move along just as well, because Snow could have gotten away from the Queen’s brother another way, and she could have run instead of ridden, but that’s just my thought. The revival of Snow as well as the actual ending were both twists that I did NOT see coming, so I have to give the writers kudos on that. Of course, I have never read the Brothers Grimm fairy tale to know if that is the way the story plays out for them or not. I may have to put them on my GoodReads reading list just because of this movie.
All things considered, this is a fairly good movie to lose yourself in for two hours, with only a smattering of curse words, none of which are too offensive to even warrant mentioning. The violence was a little over the top in places, and could have been dialed back, but seeing as how Snow White and the Huntsman found itself going up against The Avengers and Men in Black 3, I guess they figured they had to throw in the extra violence to stay competitive. The drinking was definitely there, with the Huntsman and the dwarves, and it seemed as though it was a plot point, so I don’t know what to think of it. There was no drug use, obviously. The only nudity, if you want to call it that, was the back of Ms. Theron that you saw twice, and her front once, with her arms covering her breasts.
Plot: 8.0/10
Humor: 9.0/10
Family Friendly Language: 9.7/10
“Family Friendly” Violence: 4.0/10
Nudity/Suggestive Situations: 8.5/10
Overall Rating: 8.7/10
As always, if you like what I have to say, please leave me feedback below or send me an e-mail at childofking88@aol.com. If you don’t like what I have to say, please leave me feedback below or send me an e-mail at childofking88@aol.com.
As always, be kind, please rewind, and remember two wrongs may not make a right, but three rights always make a left.
