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These past few years we’ve had a lot of fairy tale re-imagining’s, including Snow White and the Huntsman. This year in fact, we have already had Snow White pop up in theaters earlier, and in a new TV show. Unfortunately the show, Once Upon a Time, is doing much better than its silver screen counterparts. Mirror Mirror tanked so hard that people have pretty much forgotten it existed. Snow White and the Huntsman, I expect, will make some noise initially at the box office, but will also whither and die.

The reason I think it will make a splash at all was the trailer. That was a pretty epic trailer. It was well cut, had great music and made all the characters look cool. It did everything a trailer should do; it sold me on the movie. A lot of bad movies have great trailers though. Troy and Â John Carter are two examples, but that only goes to show you that with quick cuts and an AC/DC song, you can make anything look appealing. The trailer for snow white and the huntsman sold me an action packed fantasy epic with a gorgeous villain, heroic leading man, and an actress, whom I am not particularly fond of, that puts the audiences in the seats. What I got however, was a sagging self important mess, that didn’t know what kind of movie it was.

It needed to be one of two things: an epic or an action movie. An epic, while it has massive action set pieces, is a movie that deals with a great story, and by that I mean the scope not the quality. For example Gladiator dealt with the fate of the Roman Empire, Kingdom of Heaven dealt with the Crusades, Lord of the Rings dealt with the fate of that world at large. Snow White and the Huntsman dealt with a kingdom with an evil ruler and a girl who could stop her. Basically the same plot as Tangled, only without the songs. So I don’t think it qualified as an epic, and if thats what they wanted then they should have given the story a much grander feel.

A perfect example of what I’m talking about is the last two Pirates of the Carribean films. They tried to create a great scope of importance surrounding the tale, but you never really felt it. At the end of the day it was just about some scraggly looking people on a boat somewhere. No real impact one way or another. Not to mention that adding of superfluous scenes. Pirates had that awful hour long scene on the island where Jack Sparrow ran from natives for no reason, other than the director thought it would be fun. It wasn’t. Snow White and the Huntsman had these as well, and although they were not as overt as the ones in Pirates, they were still present and still boring. That’s really what makes this movie sag, and thats what makes this movie bad.

We start off with a pretty cool story, excellent effects, betrayal, magic,and Â everything else we were promised. Then we reach the middle bit of the film and its just Snow White and the Huntsman walking places and occasionally encountering monsters or bad guys. The whole plot revolves around her escaping from the queen and getting to one of the old king’s allies in a neighboring kingdom. Its a simple goal, one far to simple for an epic. Now, I know what you might say, “But what about Lord of the Rings? Isn’t that just about going to a volcano and dropping a piece of jewelry in?” Yes. But, it’s also about following your destiny, political intrigue, and the passing of an age, while Snow White is about kicking an evil broad out of a chair and making the plants grow again. It has no great purpose, no unifying idea. If we had a lot more Huntsman storyline, rather than him just being the reluctant body guard, then MAYBE the story would have been more interesting, and the movie more entertaining. Basically Chris Hemsworth played Han Solo from a New Hope, only with less wisecracks. A cool character but he didn’t go anywhere. In fact, none of the characters went anywhere since the movie takes place in the space of 3-4 days. They walk somewhere, they get an army, they walk back. Frankly, it needed much more than it gave. For that reason alone its not worth your time or money in the theater. You’ll get nothing less from watching it at home on your TV.

The Bottom Line:

Avoid Snow White and the Huntsman. If it’s on TV, you could do much worse, but you could also do MUCH better.

Until next time…

See you at the theater