Review: 'Snow White''s 2025 Remake Is A Poisoned Apple
The fairest this is not.
The reviewed film and its inspiration have 2 titles: 2025 is ‘Snow White’ and 1937 is ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ The titles are used as such to distinguish them from one another.
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
Independent of its source material, ‘Snow White’ is a fine film with some bad music and interesting new plot choices. But just like a mirror, the longer you look into it, the more you see. That’s not always a good thing.
Since film reviews are not my usual focus, let me qualify myself for this one. Growing up, I ate, slept, lived, and breathed ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ And by that I mean I had, used, and played with cups, straws, mugs, plates, bowls, and utensils, bedsheets, comforters, stuffed toys, collectible glass figurines and snowglobes, figurines, games, clothes, watches, clocks, hats, bags, documentaries and books that detailed the history, and every other conceivable merchandisable object related to the film that I could get my hands on (there was even a small, working fountain which used to sit on my bedside end table). The 1937 classic had been re-released in theaters when I was 3 and released to home video for the first time when I was 4, so it was a kismet time to be a kid obsessed with the film, and a terrible time to go into a Disney Store with me. Though I’m not invested in it like I used to be, that part of me is still there, and remaking this film strikes a resonant, albeit wrong, chord with me.
Out the gate, ‘Snow White’ has been plagued, PLAGUED I tell you, by what I’ll call ‘snafus.’ Take your pick: the casting of Rachel Zegler, a non-white actress, to play Snow White, whose name is derived from her skin color; Zegler’s disparaging comments about the original character/film, the felon running the country, and Palestine (the latter of which, a single 5-word tweet, is now being assigned the bulk of the blame for the film’s colossal failure); the political comments of co-star Gal Gadot; the decision to create the seven dwarfs entirely from CGI; the alteration of the story; the removal of key songs from the film. And that’s not even all of them. Last Sunday, The New York Times put a feature about the snafus on the cover of their Sunday Business section.
In considering ‘Snow White,’ it is important to understand that Walt Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was revolutionary in virtually every fashion. It was the first-ever full-length animated feature film. Its advances in animation, especially its portrayal of human movement and filming of multi-plane scenes (for which a special, massive camera was developed), were groundbreaking. Its soundtrack was the first commercially released soundtrack album. It proved that people could sit through a feature-length animated film, and that animation could cause joy, fear, and tears, in both children and adults. Nothing was the same after ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ It managed to set and remains the bar for animated films, even though it was the first of its kind and is nearly 90 years old.
For Disney to even think of returning to the film and taking it a step further by attempting to reimagine it is the steepest cliff the company has faced since creating the original. It’s also among the dumbest things it’s ever done (and Disney has done some truly stupid things over the years). Forget matching or rivaling that original picture; coming close to the vicinity of the continent that holds the country that contains the state and city which house the arena that contains the ballpark that film resides in is virtually impossible. And this 2025 film solidifies that.
‘Snow White’ is an unnecessary reimagination of a singular film that possesses barely a fraction of the magic that still emanates from its source material. It’s unclear what the goal here even was, unless it was to piss people off, in which case, they did a stupendous job. It does not elevate the 1937 story. Instead, ‘Snow White’ takes a pointless joyride with the skeleton of a classic film, and arrives as yet another unremarkable retelling of this classic fairy tale plagued by poor choices.
In spite of the casting controversy, Rachel Zegler proves herself to be the fairest choice for the role, especially since she just may be the best piece of this film. She plays the part well, but is undercut by that terrible wig (which went through multiple edits and still couldn’t be salvaged). It is wild that the look they settled on is supposed to be convincing as ‘fairest of them all,’ because it comes off more reminiscent of the old Starburst Berries and Cream ad or Shrek’s Lord Farquaad.
Inversely, Gal Gadot aces the look of the Evil Queen (kudos to the film’s costume designer for her work), but she is god-awful in the role. She isn’t scary; she’s a caricature of an intimidating figure. And a hokey little song and dance complete with choreography distance her further from that core piece of this character. Her Wicked Witch leaves much to be desired, too. She’s not scary, just old.
The Seven Dwarfs are their own ball of controversy, starting with the question posed by actor Peter Dinkledge of whether a story like this should even still be told. Completely CGI-created, the 2025 dwarfs are some unholy marriage of mythical, human, old, young, and god knows what else. They’re not unique enough to be distinguishable at quick glance, and because of this and a script that doesn’t give them much time, their individuality suffers. Also, Dopey works up the nerve to first whistle, then speak, and is later revealed to be the film’s narrator, which just doesn’t sit right, given that he didn’t speak in the original.
Throughout ‘Snow White,’ certain scenes and cinematography replicate the iconic moments from 1937, but the story undergoes significant changes. Snow White isn’t dreaming of love, she dreams of better days. There’s no prince, either. Instead, Andrew Burnap plays a Robin Hood-esque, charming-looking leader of a rag-tag gang who represent resistance against the Evil Queen. The film doesn’t end with true love’s kiss, nor a stormy chase up a mountain and subsequent lightning-struck downfall of the Witch. Though Snow White is awakened from her poison apple-induced slumber by love’s first kiss, the film drags on. She returns to her father’s castle, dwarfs, love-interest, rag-tag gang, and animal friends in tow, to confront the Evil Queen (who has reverted from her Wicked Witch appearance). A tense standoff anticlimactically dissolves after Snow White reminds her subjects who they are and what good they were before the Queen’s tyrannical reign. The Queen’s literal dissolution is a convenient closing of the gap with no real explanation.
There’s also a technical issue with the film: between several scenes, the camera quickly loses and gains focus in a jarring fashion. It’s not a production technique, it’s a glitch that disrupts the experience and further distances the film from the magic it aspires to.
Perhaps most egregious of all is the musical direction of the remake, which has equally large shoes to fill. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was the first-ever commercially released soundtrack, and the songs are classics, some even ingrained in the Great American Songbook.
For one, the film’s score comes up short. It’s a fine score, crafted by Jeff Morrow, but it doesn’t excite or thrill. The 1937 film’s score was so closely tethered to the nuances of each scene, it often underscored the movements made by the characters. That elevated and transformed the experience of watching and listening, which is sorely missed here.
Aside from the score, the musical numbers are painful. Barely three of the eight songs from the 1937 film, “Heigh Ho,” “Whistle While You Work,” and “The Silly Song,” survived the adaptation and appear in this film. The former two songs have been reconfigured with new-yet-unnecessary lyrics, while the latter has been stripped of its lyrics and reduced to just over a minute of yodels and music.
EGOTs Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, best known for their work on ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’ ‘La La Land,’ and ‘The Greatest Showman,’ were brought in to write the new songs for this remake. It’s confounding to think that what’s in ‘Snow White’ is the best two EGOTs can do, but everyone has a worst, and this is a strong candidate for theirs.
The music Pasek and Paul created is so bad that it’s actually a toss up which number takes the prize of fairest musical fuck-up. The first candidate is the Evil Queen’s “All Is Fair,” which answers that never-asked question, what if the Evil Queen sang a song? Truly, who asked for this? Part of what made that 1937 character so scary and set the standard for those villains who followed (namely Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother and Maleficent) was that she seemed to have no time for the bullshit. She was, like the diamond Gadot’s character aspires to in this film: cold, hard, and glamorous, but seemingly not fond of song. In this song, Gadot comes off as a caricature. The goofy cancels out the scary, which never quite sticks the landing, anyway.
The next is possibly worse; a Snow White/not-prince Johnathan face-off called “Princess Problems.” It’s a hokey, meant-to-be-somewhat-playful, diminishing Broadway spar that misses every shot it takes. It’s just dreadful. A second duet between the two, “A Hand Meets A Hand,” a love song, is blasé. It distances itself from uniqueness as its melody takes cues from ‘Wicked’’s “Dancing Through Life,” which even reprises in the score.
Finally, there’s the new big number and lead single, “Waiting On A Wish,” which is miles ahead of the aforementioned terrible entries, but arrives at great cost. To align with the film’s abandonment of a romantic love story with a prince, they scrapped the songs that propel that narrative: the 1937 film’s first musical number “I’m Wishing”/“One Song,” and what is considered one of the greatest film songs of all time, “Some Day My Prince Will Come” (though it apparently appears in the film briefly, I must’ve missed that part, and it’s not included in the soundtrack or score).
Let’s just sit with that for a minute. The one ‘Snow White’ remake that can use that iconic song… didn’t. Disney previously held “Some Day My Prince Will Come” in such high regard that they commissioned Barbra freaking Streisand to record a special rendition to accompany the first DVD release of the film in 2001. Imagine for a second, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ without “Over The Rainbow,” ‘Titanic’ without “My Heart Will Go On,” ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ without “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” ‘West Side Story’ without “Somewhere,’ ‘Pinocchio’ without “When You Wish Upon A Star,” or ‘The Way We Were’ without “The Way We Were.” That’s what this removal equates to.
Back to its replacement. “Waiting On A Wish” is a blaise boilerplate Broadway song with a slightly catchy chorus that people just might remember the day after they hear it. It’s no “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” and it’s no Disney classic. It’s your typical “I want” Broadway/film song that aspires to things like “Defying Gravity” but does nothing to make itself stand out from a large crowd of similar songs in other films and Broadway productions.
For all the many, many misgivings in ‘Snow White,’ there are a few other bright spots. The animals, though CGI, are cute, especially the ones on top of the opening scene’s storybook. There's satisfaction in seeing scenes from the original recreated here. Though too short, the scene where Snow White runs through the forest nails the scary part. Seeing the cottage inhabited by the seven dwarfs for the first time in somewhat real life, made my heart flutter, as did the replications of the original scenes during “Heigh Ho,” and the Evil Queen descending down the spiral staircase with her cape flowing behind her.
But there are so many things that this film scraps, perhaps the worst being the scene during the still-present “The Silly Song” where Dopey, donning a long overcoat, climbs on top of Sneezy to dance with Snow White. It’s a quintessential piece of the original film that’s been immortalized in various figurines, ornaments, and even how the two were packaged for Mattel’s doll line. Meanwhile, merchandise for this 2025 film is few and far between, a far cry from the collection I amassed. Mattel’s two dolls for this film retail at $149.99 a piece, a ridiculous price to ask of the parents of the kids that this film was in-part made for.
In conclusion, 1937’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ remains the fairest of them all. 2025’s ‘Snow White’ serves as a reminder that every animated Disney film doesn’t require a real-life-ish remake. Next time, just put the 1937 film back in theaters again (and there’s still time to do that!). I’d go see that at least 5 times. I’d even dance in the aisles again like I did in 1993.
