Mirror Mirror
What does it say about Hollywood when we get TWO different versions of the same story in the same calender year? Well, fundamentally, it means that Hollywood is short of original ideas; I mean, did we REALLY need double the volcano movies in 1997, or double the asteroid flicks in 1998? But two movies based on the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale, “Snow White,” especially when Disney did an iconic version back in 1937? Really, guys? Well, the first of this year’s dueling Snow White stories is out with director Tarsem Singh’s “Mirror Mirror,” and I have to admit, while it doesn’t come close to the Disney masterpiece, there’s plenty in this sumptuous visual feast to justify its existence.
The story begins, in true fairy tale form, with a voiceover setting the mood: many years ago, a king and his queen had a daughter, so beautiful that she was beloved throughout the land. Her name was Snow White (Lily Collins). Her mother died in childbirth, and after years, the king remarried to a temptress who had cast a spell over him. After he disappeared while hunting, she took over as queen, ruling with little regard for her subjects, but complete regard to her vanity, using magic to maintain her beauty for years. On the eve of her 18th birthday, however, Snow White begins to long for a life outside of the castle, where her evil stepmother (Julia Roberts) has kept her under lock and key. When a handsome prince (Armie Hammer) rides into town, however, the world Snow White has long known will be upended.
The movie’s narrative is only superficially interesting, as screenwriters Melissa Wallack and Jason Keller follow the same basic blueprint their predecessors in Snow White moviemaking have already laid in front of them. What makes the film entertaining is not just the lush beauty of Tarsem’s images (hardly unexpected from the director of “The Cell,” “The Fall,” and “Immortals”), but the way they bring out the characterizations of certain characters, namely, the seven dwarfs. These aren’t the same comedic sidekicks from the Disney film, but people who feel less from a fantasy world as they do real individuals. They used to have real jobs within the town, but the queen manipulated her subjects to distrust anyone who she deemed “undesirable”; needless to say, small people didn’t make the cut of desirable people. The dwarfs end up an important part of the story, and when Snow White finds herself having to live with them, we learn more as much about them as we do the other, vital characters in the film, from Collins’s beautiful Snow White and Roberts’s narcissistic and delightfully evil queen to Hammer’s dashing prince and Nathan Lane’s bumbling assistant to the queen. In many ways, the dwarfs (played by Mark Povinelli, Jordan Prentice, Ronald Lee Clark, Sebastian Saraceno, Martin Klebba, and Joe Snoffo) carry the film during its lulls, and give us a reason to care about whether the film gets its happy ending or not. Actually, the more I think about it, WITHOUT the way the movie handles its seven dwarfs, I’m not sure I’d care much about the film at all, regardless of how beautiful it is to look at. That being said, it is a fine, family fantasy; lovely to look at, easy to digest, and not dark enough to scare off the kiddies. And did I mention the Bollywood-esque musical number at the end by the great Alan Menken? Really, who can say no to THAT?
