Snow White and the Huntsman
There was a moment during “Snow White and the Huntsman” where our heroine (played by Kristen Stewart) and the titular Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) are walking in The Dark Forest, having just gotten away from the Evil Queen’s men. We’ve already seen how The Dark Forest contains fascinating, fantastical creatures. As they’re walking, I couldn’t help but riff to myself the following exchange: “What about the R.O.U.S’s?” “Rodents of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.”
That I thought about “The Princess Bride” during 2012’s second, revisionist movie of the Grimm fairy tale isn’t indicative of any particular comparisons with THAT film, but rather, it’s one of many movies that came to mind while watching Rupert Sanders’s gritty epic. In no particular order, other films that came to mind were: “Braveheart”; “Pan’s Labyrinth”; “The Lord of the Rings”; “The Neverending Story”; and “Troll 2,” which I thought about while watching Charlize Theron’s performance as Ravenna, The Evil Queen. I know, that last one in particular isn’t really flattering to the Oscar winner (who looks amazing through most of the movie, even if she hams it up big-time), but that’s how my mind works, unfortunately.
Compared to the more family-friendly entry in this year’s Snow White competition, “Mirror Mirror,” “Snow White and the Huntsman” is more assured in its filmmaking technique; more confident in its tone; and more beautiful to take in, despite its darker vision. There’s one sequence in the middle of the film that really sets it apart from the earlier film, as Snow White and the Huntsman (the characters) follow the dwarfs into the Sanctuary, which is the home of the fairies. This is one of the most original, and visually thrilling, fantasy worlds ever conceived on film, surpassing even some of the greatest fantasy films of the past decade, and transporting us into a place of pure wonder.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film (and the screenplay by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini) isn’t so unique. For much of the movie, “Snow White and the Huntsman” feels like Ridley Scott’s pointless “Robin Hood” reinvention from a couple of years ago; it has some different ideas, and some previously unseen angles from which it comes to the story, but on the whole, it’s too formulaic, and too long (at over two hours), to really pack the cinematic punch a blockbuster like this should.
