Now Snow White is awol, this dreary and incoherent CGI mashup of plots from Frozen, Narnia and The Incredibles really cannot justify its existence

Here it is: the least keenly anticipated prequel-slash-sequel of the year. It is the follow-up that nobody much wanted to the film that nobody much liked, resulting in something even more visually elaborate and boring, and about which the number of tosses that can be reasonably given is lower than ever.

Snow White and the Huntsman – review Read more

What on earth is the point of this dreary sub-franchise fairytale product? It takes its audience to a Zen state beyond pointlessness, an incoherent CGI world created by an army of execs at a million dire meetings, grimly hashing out the ways in which the profitability of the first film could be continued and maximised by pinching plot points from Frozen, and set-dressing from Narnia and Middle Earth.

Four years ago, Snow White and the Huntsman was a unimaginative reimagining of the Snow White legend which comprehensively misunderstood its delicacy, charm and mythic power, wasting the talents of Charlize Theron as the wicked queen, and promoting the huntsman (the guy who passes off an animal heart as Snow White’s heart) to a fully hunky romantic lead, played by Chris Hemsworth. It’s a film which played up a Twilight-y implied contest between two suitors and in fact owed its commercial existence to the presence of Kristen Stewart as Snow White.

Now, Snow White and Kristen Stewart have been chillingly banished from this new film. A plumply sonorous voiceover introduces us to the fantastically dull backstory of all that went before. Evil Queen Ravenna (Theron) used to have a relatively nice sister, Freya (Emily Blunt) who is now with child, courtesy of a nobleman who tragically happens to be affianced to another. Becoming a mother, and therefore bathed in saintly loveliness, Freya incurs Ravenna’s jealous rage and she does something awful to her sister (though, heart-sinkingly, absolutely definitive visual proof its awfulness is not shown, leaving things clear for a third movie) which turns Freya into a bitter, icy-hearted villainess with ice-related superpowers pinched from Frozen and indeed Frozone from The Incredibles.

She retreats to a land “in the North” and there raises an army that she oddly calls “Huntsmen” – they don’t do any hunting per se – whose sole loyalty is to her. But two of these huntspersons fall in love – and they are Eric, played by Hemsworth, and Sara, played by Jessica Chastain – the one and only flame-haired queen of his heart, a bit like the girl in Brave.

These two huntspeople play a vital role in Snow White’s kingdom seven years later – that is, after the first film – when SW decrees that Eric must help her place the fabled mirror beyond all wicked use.

This tiresome, garbled and inert plot is not much helped by the comedy presence of comedy dwarves, played by Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith and Alexandra Roach – another prodigal waste of talent. There is much hearty thigh-slapping laughter on the subject of how ugly female dwarves are.

The two leads themselves have graduated from the Russell Crowe school of pseudo-British elocution. Both Hemsworth and Chastain are peaking notional English with a bizarre Brigadoon accent, for which they must have prepared by spending a month in Motherwell, a fortnight in Belfast and then a year with a Scots-Gaelic-speaking community in Welwyn Garden City.

It really is a nuclear war of dullness. Let’s hope the mystery of Freya’s child can remain a mystery and hostilities can cease.