Snow White (2025) Review
The first of two Disney live action remakes of the year has dropped in theaters. The most controversial movie of 2025, Snow White is finally here. There’s been so much bad press and bad headlines for this movie for two years. What did I think about the movie? Did the controversy affect my enjoyment of the movie? Let’s get started!
The Good
Weirdly enough, the best part about this movie is Rachel Zegler. Say what you will about her, you might love her, you might hate her, or you might disagree with her comments. No matter what, you have to admit that she's a talented actress and singer. She’s made a lot of foolish and outright dumb comments about the movie and the animated movie that has made this movie a PR nightmare for two years. Sometimes it’s hard to seperate the art from the artist. She does a good job here. For the version of Snow White that this movie is going for she’s able to portray it well. She can be charming when she meets some of the woodland creatures, the dwarfs, and the love interest in the movie. She can sing very well and the musical numbers with her singing are good. Her big break into Hollywood was Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story. Naturally when that’s her break into Hollywood, Spielberg trusts her to lead a musical. You know that any musical she’s in she’s going to be good in.
When I think I should mention, I only watched the original animated movie for the first time just a couple weeks back. I don’t have nostalgia for the original, I don’t hold it as one of Disney’s best. What I’m about to say might be controversial to some people, if it is I’m sorry. I liked the new songs in the movie. The original ones with Heigh-Ho is a classic and the melody of it gets stuck in your head. But the new songs I think work and are fun. Are these going to be remembered as some of Disney’s best? No. Do I view these as some of Disney’s best? No. But the melody and tunes of them I thought were good, I wasn’t annoyed by any of them. Over the past six months, we’ve gotten Moana 2 and Mufasa: The Lion King that didn’t have memorable songs. The new songs in this movie I think are better than almost any of the songs in those two movies and more memorable.
Finally, the movie is very colorful and vibrant. The kingdom itself is pretty dull with lots of grays. Once the movie goes into the forest and we meet all of these creatures there’s more color in there. When it was focused on that and you got a lot of these colorful sequences and moments, they worked for me. It adds a sense of being transported into a Disney movie. For chunks of the movie, the colors captivated me and stood out to me.
The Bad
This movie had all sorts of controversy surrounding it for years. Zegler’s comments back in 2022 set the internet on fire and made fans of the original made. Here’s what she said about the movie. “The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird. Weird. So we didn’t do that this time. We have a different approach to what I’m sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnap, great dude. But it’s really not about her love story at all, which is really, really wonderful. All of Andrew’s scenes could get cut, who knows? It’s Hollywood, baby.” She said this back in 2022 and sort of hasn’t stopped making comments like this. What’s weird is that so much of the movie feels like reshoots, it’s so obvious what’s reshoots and what’s not. Zegler’s quote indicated that they were going in a very different direction from the original animated movie. Speculation is that the dwarfs were a part of the reshoots and not even in the original version of this movie. When you hear that and when you know that, you’re looking at those changes. How different is this movie from the animated movie? It feels like after Zegler’s comments and early test screenings of the movie, they changed the movie to better resemble the animated movie. Everything with the dwarfs, the poison apple, and the love interest feels like reshoots. Nothing really ties together all of the elements that you’d expect in a Snow White movie feels like it’s there to be there. The way the poison apple is used in the movie feels pointless to the rest of the movie. That’s one of the most important parts, maybe the most iconic scene from the animated movie is Snow White eating the poison apple. In this movie, you could have cut that bit out of the movie and it wouldn’t change. That’s weird when we’re talking about Snow White and the most important part feels pointless.
Tied to that, the movie tries to mix the ideas from the original version of the movie and the reshoots version. Because of that, there’s simply way too much going on in this movie. You have Snow White, The Evil Queen, we learn about the relationship between Snow White’s dad and The Evil Queen, the dwarfs, the love interest, the bandits, the poison apple, and a character arc for Dopey. There’s so much in this movie that it feels unfocused and I didn’t feel like any pieces were properly fleshed out or developed. The big example of this is the romance in the movie. Show White falls in love with a bandit, not a prince. They have to spend 10-15 minutes of the movie explaining who the bandits are so they establish the love interest. You don’t buy into their relationship and when you get the true love's kiss in the third act you don’t feel anything. Speaking of that kiss, if you look closely enough he’s kissing her chin not her lips. It’s frustrating because the director of the movie is Marc Webb. Marce Webb directed The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In that movie, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have great chemistry with each other. I think they easily have the best chemistry of our Spider-Man couples. So much of that boils down Webb’s direction and his ability to have chemistry with his leads. Given that almost all of the romantic and heart eyes scenes between Snow White and her love were in reshoots, it doesn’t capture that magic that it should. All of the other stuff doesn’t have the magic and charm that it should. That’s so frustrating to me and part of the reason why these Disney live action remakes feel pointless and lifeless.
The other big thing to talk about with this movie are the dwarfs. This is another aspect of the movie that brought all sorts of controversies because they CGI’d the dwarfs and didn’t hire actors. Peter Dinklage said some quotes that made a bunch of people mad. In the movie, the dwarfs look terrifying and bad. Since they were almost guaranteed a part in the reshoots they didn’t have enough time to make them look good. If they had another year or six months, maybe the CGI could have looked good. When they’re standing next to real people you see the differences. You see that their skin doesn’t have the color in it and their eyes have no emotions in them. The fact that this movie has a $250 million budget and has the dwarfs looking terrible, there’s no excuse. With the money that Disney has available they should have looked 10x better. Even tying back to what I said before about the reshoots. They don’t serve much of a point in the movie. In fact, I feel like if you were to cut them from the movie nothing would change. It would be 20-25 minutes shorter, but the flow of the story would be the same. When you have some of the most iconic Disney side characters of all time feel like nothing in remake is stupid. Beyond that, there’s scenes where they don’t make sense to be in. In the third act, there’s a scene where the dwarfs are blocking The Evil Queen from entering the castle. They’re standing up to her and have their heroic moment. The next shot is The Evil Queen in the castle, it feels like their little bit right there was pointless and didn’t make sense in the movie. The moment is pretty jarring as you’re confused by what happened and why the dwarfs were there to begin with.
Finally, this isn’t necessarily an issue with the movie but with these live action remakes in general. It's simply that I’m just tired and exhausted from these movies. They were fun for a while, some of them have been good and I’ve enjoyed them. But there’s a lot of them that feel pointless and lifeless and Snow White is another example of that. I don’t know how you could have made a good version of Snow White because I don’t feel like the original movie is a great movie to adapt into live action. The stuff that you’d have to add to make it longer takes away the magic and charm of the animated movie. I don’t mean to put Disney’s entire strategy for their live action remakes as an issue for this movie. But it came out when it’s been a while since we’ve gotten a good Disney live action remake. Lilo & Stitch looks good, maybe that’ll be the best since Aladdin (2019).
Final Thoughts: When you put it all together, Snow White (2025) is another pointless and bland Disney live action remake. I was never excited for this movie to begin with, the trailers weren’t great, and Zegler’s comments certainly didn’t help. The movie fell short of my expectations. This is one of the worst live action remakes, probably going to be one of the worst movies of the year. If you were interested in this movie, just wait till Disney+ there’s no need to rush out and go see it.
The Score: 7.2/10 (C-)
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