Snow White and the Huntsman (and a little bit of Mirror Mirror)

Okay, I didn’t review Mirror Mirror. I’m not sure why. I really liked that movie, but I couldn’t quite put in to words what I liked about it. It was just campy fun that felt like it was honouring, and satirising, the Disney-style fairy tale films. I guess that’s my review of it. See that film. You might not agree with me, but it’s well worth watching, especially in this age of fairy tale films that are being DARK and EDGY and GRITTY. You know, like what Snow White and the Huntsman was trying to be.

Now, this film I can honestly put into words how I felt about it. A lot of words. But I think one word that mostly sums it up is ‘vacuous’. The film is just so empty and devoid of substance that it doesn’t leave a lasting impression. As I left the cinema I was complaining about certain aspects of the film, but often found myself trying to remember what else I didn’t like because though I didn’t like it I still couldn’t remember what it was.

Snow White and the Huntsman is your basic Snow White story but made all dark because fun isn’t allowed any more. Now we have a ridiculously evil queen (Charlize Theron) and her ridiculously evil brother (Sam Spruell) taking over a kingdom and then locking the vacant princess, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) in the dungeon. Of course, Snow White escapes and is then hunted by Eric, the title’s ‘Huntsman’ (Chris Hemsworth). Of course, Snow White befriends the guy in about a minute because the evil brother just blurts out that he’s going to betray Eric.

This is our main cast for most of the film. What’s that? You want dwarfs in this Snow White film? Ah, no you don’t. They’ll just be some side characters who offer little to the plot or story. In fact, you can pretty much say that about any character, to be honest. There’s some talent in here (Theron and Hemsworth) but they are wasted on an awful script that gives them so few lines and such little time for character development that they don’t really have screen presence. But in a film where no one has much screen presence I suppose they fit in extremely well.

The acting was, at times, pretty good. Hemsworth and Theron do what they can with the script and some of the dwarfs seem to be trying their best to be memorable (spoilers: they aren’t). However, the evil brother is just irritating with his over-acting, whilst Stewart is bland. She’s always bland. I’ve seen her in the Twilight films, Adventureland and this and in all of these she has the same blank expression on her face. Sometimes she’ll try to emote but this is worse than the blandness as moving her facial muscles obviously causes her a lot of visible pain.

The plot was pretty dire, too, and seemed to have little focus. The scenes didn’t have much flow, leaving you wondering how or why the story was at that point. At a few points things made no sense, such as characters coming back from the dead from plot convenience or a quick scene with Theron showing her do nothing whatsoever. Then it just all kind of ended with little resolution to anything (SPOILERS: Snow White stabs her. She dies. Then Snow White becomes the queen. Then she looks around at everyone. THE END!). Personally, I expected some kind of epilogue or speech or something, but there was nothing whatsoever. It just ended like a cheesy 80s action movie.

Don't know what happened here. Strange stuff happens a lot for no reason.

Then we have the thing that could have helped this movie hold itself together: the action. People love action scenes. They are fun. They are even better if we can see what’s going on. Thanks to some pretty bad cinematography I couldn’t keep track of any of the fight sequences, sometimes wondering what part of the setting the camera was focussing on or who was fighting who. One scene had a fight at night with fire lighting the area, but bugger me if I could tell you who was fighting in it or who was on which side. Pull out the camera bit then I may have seen more of it and enjoyed it.

This was upsetting as I could see some pretty good combat going on in there. It looked realistic and it seemed that every hit had an effect on the fight. I just wanted to see these fights. It’s a shame because most of the cinematography and directing was pretty good, showing off some good looking scenery (though it was too focussed on the scenery at some points, rather than focussing on plot and such). It was just when things were happening that it all fell apart visually. 

Keeping with the visuals, actually, I did see a lot of points I thought “That looks like Lord of the Rings”. The mountains, the panning shots of people walking over greenery, stuff like that. It all stank of Lord of the Rings. Then there were the crows, or ravens (the Queen is called Ravenna), that looked strangely like Saruman’s spies. Oh, and then they ripped off that bit in The NeverEnding Story where Artax, the horse, drowns in the Swamps of Sadness. That was just shameful. This film borrowed from a lot more films, resulting in something that was more Avatar than Pulp Fiction. 

This film, however, did have potential to be good. It lost its focus early on and spent too much time on scenes it didn’t need to. Some more characterisation would have been good, especially for the two characters who are IN THE TITLE, and maybe someone could try and get Kristen Stewart to have as many, maybe more, emotions than Nic Cage. At least then she would show some emotion. A tighter, better script would have been nice as well. Weird how a 2 hour long film could do so little...