Well, here's one of them. I have to admit, the blaring 'Julia Roberts!' across the top of the DVD cover didn't exactly excite my interest, as I don't waste time keeping up with celebrities. Neither do I watch Snow White films.
I mean...really! I don't. Swear. Pinky swear. This was an exception...
Okay, I've seen quite a few Snow White movies. Confession. But that does not mean I'm enamored with the story, because I'm not. Promise.
*twitch*
No, really, I'm not.
SPOILER ALERT
So we start out with the classic Snow White story, except this time the evil queen (played by Julia Roberts) is narrating. She says it's her story, but we can forget that obvious lie and move on.
I'm going to assume for education's sake you know the Snow White story, because it's a classic. I'm jumping right into the movie's plot...which is different.
Snow White is a timid little pretty young eighteen-year-old princess who lives in her room all day. The evil queen keeps her that way, and in the meantime plays...ship chess with her baron. Yeah. Ship chess. It looked pretty cool. I wanna play it...
Anyway, Snow finally gets it into her head to go see her kingdom (which, apparently, amounts to a castle, a small town, and a forest...yup). She goes out and is shocked at the poor state of the people, whose poverty is caused by the Queen's lavish living and taxes that help her pay it. None of the people know her, and she knows none of the people, 'cause she's a hopeless shut-in who does nothing.
In the process of wandering about, she stumbles on our Prince Charming, who happens to be played by the guy who was the protagonist in the recent Lone Ranger movie.
Yes, him. Snow finds him and his traveling companion strung up by their toes, having been captured by bandits and ransacked for all their wordly goods. She sets them free, they exchange a little awkwardness, and then they part ways.
The prince, apparently, is headed out in search of 'adventure'. Lame. But, lo and behold, he stumbles across Snow's castle and is admitted by the evil queen, who likes his looks and money so much she decides she's going to marry him.
She throws a huge ball in hopes of impressing him. He is met in the ball by Snow White (who didn't know he was a prince) and they exchange some more awkwardness. The queen observes their exchange, however, and decides she wants Snow out of the way, permanently. So she orders her manservant to kill Snow.
The manservant takes her out to the woods, feels some compassion, and cuts her free to run away. She begins sprinting through the forest in a huge dress (how much flipping wind resistance does that have to have??), then taps her dainty little head against a rotten tree branch and faints. Did I mention she was a bit fragile...?
Luckily for her, said tree branch happens to be part of a huge beaver hut that was built by the seven dwarves. Dwarffes. Dwarvfs. Stupid autocorrect, I had it right the first time. They are all shocked she's not in the kitchen and have compassion on her, taking her in and having her make sandwiches for all.
Nah, not really. But she does cook for them.
Little does she know (for about five minutes), these dwarves are in fact the bandits that strung her prince up to dry. She finds out when the dwarves raid a carriage that was transporting taxes to the queen. Suffice it to say that after that, they give the taxes back to the people. Sort of.
When the news of the 'highway robbery' gets to the castle, the prince grinds his teeth at mention of the bandits and sets out with a company of guards to finish them. The dwarves, who have been training Snow White in combat, sally forth to meet them and once again strip them of their clothes and belongings, chasing them back to the castle. In the midst of their scuffle, the prince meets up with Snow again and fights her, exchanging some more awkwardness.
By the time he gets back, however, he is obviously enamored with Snow. The queen, not liking the fact that Snow is still alive - much less that the prince is in wuv with her - consults her magic mirror (which is actually a portal to another dimension that contains nothing but her little witch-hut in the middle of an ocean and her alternate personality...eh...necesita psychologist much?). She turns her manservant into a cockroach for his failed delivery of the taxes, tells her magical alternate personality to kill Snow (again) and gets a love potion to make the prince love her instead of Snow.
Unfortunately for her, this love potion turns out to be a 'puppy love' potion...however that works, and it makes the prince behave like an overly attached puppy to her. And I think her quote "There are pros and cons to this" sums that up quite well.
Meanwhile, Snow is attacked by magical marionettes, because...well, I guess that was the best way to kill her? She couldn't just be turned into a cockroach and then stomped? Eh...movie logic. The marionettes smash a bunch of stuff before Snow discovers their weakness...strings. Yeah. Just cut their strings and they're helpless. Dumbest...assassination attempt...ever.
They prepare to get married, but Snow hears about the wedding and takes her dwarves to go break the thing up. They steal the prince and leave the wedding guests in their underwear, making an interesting spectacle when the queen arrives and finds her bridegroom kidnapped and the wedding in disarray. She stomps off to go kill Snow herself.
Back at the dwarves' hideout, they try many ways to lift the spell on the prince. These 'ways' include ear-boxing, blowing a horn in his face, playing pool with his head, and plain good ol' fashioned slugging his face. With fists. Nothing seems to work, until one of the dwarves suggests 'love's first kiss', and tells Snow she can do it. Snow works herself up to finally do it (apparently it's her first kiss ever...I'd say bravo, but one: she's eighteen and unmarried, and two: she was shut up in a castle for ninety percent of her current life.), and she kisses the prince, lifting the spell on him.
The queen then arrives. Apparently a mythical beast lives in part of the forest and terrorizes the kingdom (this was explained way back in the movie), but now it turns out the queen controls it and she sends it after Snow. The beast turns out to be her father under a spell (who vanished into the forest way back in the beginning of the movie), and Snow severs the magical link between him and the evil queen. Severing this link not only kills the beast, it also appears to age the queen, removing her beauty. Snow then marries the prince, and they all live happily ever after.
A few things to mention. Quite a few actors played/camioed in this movie, including Julia Roberts (duh), Sean Bean (who was the king...WHAT?), a very brief show of Johnny Depp, and that little dwarf from Pirates of the Caribbean. And a few others I can't stick names to. However, it's quite obvious they were only there for the trailer hook, nothing more. The movie has a B-rating.
They do have a throwback to the 'poisoned apple' from the original Snow White story. After being defeated and aged, the queen shows up disguised at Snow's wedding and offers her the apple as a wedding gift. However, her words give her away, and Snow doesn't take the bait, instead jabbing her with one of her own lines "You should know when you're beaten" that the queen said during the ship-chess game.
"You're a traitor!"
"You're a jerk!"
(The Prince and Snow White)
END SPOILERS
Despite its B-rating, I did actually somewhat enjoy this movie. It was an interesting quirk on the original Snow White tale. While not that well executed, the dialogue and characters are interesting enough. The plot is not that great, but its less-than-spectacularness is downplayed by the movie's pros. Animation, for the little CG there is, is fine; save for one scene where the painted background is blatantly obvious.
The movie was light-hearted, obviously not taking itself seriously. Jokes are numerous and fairly executed.
Overall, I'd say this movie is a might-watch. It's hovering between meh and good, so...draw your own conclusions. I'd recommend getting it from the library, which is what we did.
And that, as they say, is that. Sayonara!
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