I am pleased (?) to report that Snow White’s atrocious Party City dress isn’t actually the worst costume in Disney’s new live-action remake of its 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That honor belongs to the outfit worn by Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), the new male lead, who’s more like Tangled’s Flynn Rider than like the original movie’s Prince Florian. For whatever reason, Jonathan sports what I can only describe as a jean-jacket-and-hoodie combination. Sure, it’s dyed a forest green in an attempt to make it fit into the movie’s fantasy vibes, but it doesn’t work at all.
I can’t stop thinking about this jean-jacket-and-hoodie combination, because it really speaks to my issues with the movie as a whole. Not only is Snow White’s costume and production design distractingly sloppy, but that particular outfit and character are so discordant with the movie’s tone and plotline that it undermines anything the movie might have going for it. Every character and subplot feels like it was brought in from a different movie. While each of them has some potential, they’re working against each other in one tangled mess of a movie.
[Ed. note: This review contains setup spoilers for the 2025 live-action Snow White.]
The new Snow White comes from director Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man), with a script from Secretary’s Erin Cressida Wilson and music by Dear Evan Hansen’s Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Rachel Zegler (West Side Story, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) stars as Snow White, a perfectly pretty and sweet princess who’s been working as a maid in the castle since her evil stepmother (Gal Gadot) became queen after her father’s disappearance. A brief prologue shows us that once upon a time, Snow White’s parents ruled the land with kindness, baking apple pies for the common folk and dancing in the streets with them. But with the Evil Queen on the throne, people starve.
Snow White doesn’t really know anything about this, though, until she catches a thief in a bad hoodie (hi, Jonathan) stealing potatoes from the castle pantry. The Queen sentences Jonathan to be tied to the castle gates, but Snow White frees him from his public humiliation. When the Magic Mirror decrees that Snow has surpassed the Queen in beauty, the Queen sends a huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to kill the princess. Instead, he lets Snow White run away into the woods. There, she stumbles upon a quaint little cottage where a family of seven uncanny-looking CGI dwarves live.
Image: Disney
In this version of the familiar fairy tale, instead of staying in the cottage, Snow White insists on leaving so she doesn’t bring danger to the dwarves. Then she stumbles across Jonathan and his band of merry men in the forest. She learns more about what’s been going on in the kingdom and realizes she needs to do something about it. Meanwhile, Jonathan is so inspired by her sweet heart and goodness that he decides he’s done with only thieving for himself and his friends, and he needs to take a stand. Oh, also, they meet up with the dwarves again.
Adding more plot to Snow White isn’t an inherently bad idea — let’s be honest, this is a pretty simplistic story. But the problem with Webb’s movie is that nothing feels tonally cohesive. Each character comes from a completely different genre, and they’re all patchwork creations, as if the writer, actor, musicians, and costume designers were each given different notes about each character’s identity.
Gadot is acting like she’s the Big Bad in a dark fantasy movie, but she’s given a ridiculously campy patter song that would soar if someone with any comedic chops at all performed it. She performs so stiffly and seriously that the darker moments of her character feel on the verge of being comically over the top, though they never quite get there. Instead, she’s in a weird limbo: The Queen never feels like a serious character or a comedic one. Her costume design also contradicts itself. Her steep stained-glass crown is gorgeous and intimidating, but her gowns look like they’re made out of those sequins that turn different colors when you rub your hand against the grain, and she sports jeweled rings that resemble Ring Pops.
Meanwhile, Burnap’s Jonathan is right out of a self-aware off-Broadway musical circa 2013, with his little anachronistic outfit and the quippy asides he mutters to himself. His big song is called “Princess Problems,” and he rags on Snow White for wanting to solve the kingdom’s oppression with the power of apple pies. His gang of bandits has a similar energy, which wouldn’t be out of place in something purposefully anachronistic, like Ella Enchanted. But as it stands, they’re just jarringly out of place with the movie’s other elements.
Zegler is the only one acting like she’s in a Disney Princess movie. She’s in a genre where the leading lady has such a pure and true heart that she can win over anyone just by remembering their name, batting her big eyes at them, and extending a hand of kindness. This isn’t a bad thing at all — the 2015 Cinderella and the 1997 made-for-TV Cinderella similarly evoked those sincere fairy-tale vibes with great success.
Even though the dwarves look frankly disturbing (yes, movie textures have gone too far), Zegler’s take on Snow White works best when she’s with them. Her big “I Want” song is generic, but she sings with so much heart that I couldn’t help but be swept away a little. But when she’s wearing a cheap-looking dress with a necklace that looks like it came off the Claire’s sales rack, and juxtaposed with Jonathan’s snarky “Excuse me, princess” attitude and whatever the hell Gadot is doing, all the power of her performance is sapped.
Image: Disney
This new Snow White movie has been catching a lot of flak for a lot of different reasons. People were mad that Zegler (who is half-white) isn’t white enough. People were mad that she said the 1937 movie is dated. People were mad when Disney said the movie wouldn’t include the dwarves; people were mad when Disney said it would include the dwarves. And haven’t we had enough live-action remakes? Conceptually, this movie was doomed from the start. It was never going to please everyone, because everyone had a different idea of what the heck it should be.
But it seems like the filmmakers also had no idea what the movie should be. Instead of sticking to any one clear vision, the new Snow White has dozens of half-baked ideas that could be good, or at least cohesive. But they never rise to anything beyond flimsy concepts, seemingly tacked on to appeal to radically different quadrants of the intended audience.
In the prologue, Snow White’s father gives her a necklace with the words “Fearless, Fair, Brave, True” stamped across it. That sentiment might seem sweet if Disney hadn’t already pulled the same “assign a princess some adjectives” with its live-action Cinderella (“have courage and be kind”) and its Mulan remake. (“Loyal, brave, and true” — they couldn’t even come up with new adjectives for Snow!) The moment is a flimsy attempt to hammer heart into a story. And with its distractingly clunky chain and default font settings, the necklace doesn’t even look good. Snow White is supposed to be a story about how inner beauty is more important than outer beauty, but honestly, this movie has neither.
Snow White opens in theaters on March 21.
