Snow White 2025 movie review

A purist’s concession of defeat.

Image taken from the Disney website. No copyright infringement intended.

March 30, 2025

Categorization: Fantasy

Where watched: In a theater with sour cream and onion popcorn

Let me start this by saying that I had already decided to watch this movie on the big screen when it was announced ages ago.

At the time of writing this post, the movie came out about ten days ago, and during these ten days social media has bombarded me a number of reviews (which I didn’t read, or search for), the sheer number and persistence of which forced their way to my attention through Instagram and Facebook (yes, I still have Facebook and still call it Facebook), which made me aware of much bruhaha concerning the actors and the movie itself. However, my decision to watch the movie in theaters had not changed. Why, you may ask?

Simple answer – I have kids.

Kids are pure, they don’t what the internet says about anything because, well, my kids at least don’t have access to the internet. My toddler daughter can’t even read yet. All my kids know is that they enjoyed Disney’s animated Snow White and they wanted to see the Snow White live action movie. It has become something of a tradition in my family to take the kids to see the latest Disney movies, like Moana 2 (they gave it two thumbs up) and Mufasa (they got bored and wanted to leave in the middle of it) a few months before. Actually, I find that their views of those movies are in accord with mine so I believe that they are quite the little discerning critics.

Let me also admit here that, as an unapologetic purist (see how much in this post here) I entered the theater carrying my own set of purist prejudices, some of which I think are consistent with the internet’s own and have been expressed in a number of stupid but amusing memes on Facebook. Number one, the fact that Disney’s live action Snow White (Rachel Zegler), clearly does not have “skin as white as snow”, which is the reason she was given the name “Snow White” in the original Brothers Grimm story. Number two, I, personally, and I think majority of the folks on the interweb, do not find Rachel Zegler as conventionally beautiful as Gal Gadot (who plays the evil queen). I mean, this is no fault of Zegler’s, as she is obviously a very attractive girl, but Gal Gadot is a beauty queen, for God’s sake, she was Miss Israel in 2004. The number of people who are more attractive than Gal Gadot in this world would probably not even make up a basketball team. I therefore did not understand how Disney would explain that Snow White was the fairest of all in a land that had Gal Gadot in it.

Despite all of this, I had already promised my kids that I would take them to see this movie and was therefore determined to see it through, and for them, the movie only had to fulfill one criterion – is it good Fantasy?

The simple answer is Yes. Yes it is.

(spoiler alert)

Disney decidedly did not cling to original plot of the classic animated Snow White or to the Brothers Grimm story. First, it interpreted (and harped on a bit, I think, but then, this is foremost a kids’ movie and subtlety might have been lost of them) the word “fair” as meaning “just” and “having inner beauty” instead of “physically beautiful”. Because of this, despite Gal Gadot's beauty, the evil queen could obviously not be the "fairest" in the land. I have to say, if I didn’t have a daughter and had watched the movie by my elder goblin lonesome, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated this re-interpretation as much. But well, I do, and so I did. I can't really argue with the English language - the word "fair" does have two meanings to it.

Second, Disney made Snow White into a “fighting princess”, in the manner of Merida from Brave, Moana, Elsa from Frozen, and to some extent Rapunzel from Tangled. And what can I say? Kids (and many adults, myself included) love a fighting princess. The Fantasy genre invented fighting princesses long before the concept was co-opted by current social movements – The Hero and the Crown (1984) by Robin Mckinley (see my post here) and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings being a few examples.  I mean, do you know what my family was doing two hours before the movie? We were buying a “Raya doll” for my daughter as a reward for good behavior. She went to the Disney Princess section of the toy store and of all the be-gowned, sparkly, crown-wearing princesses there, she wanted Raya. Raya, in her arm cuffs and Viet Cong military pants, from Raya and The Last Dragon, who is probably the most intense Disney fighting princess of them all. Something about a fighting princess just has universal appeal.

This purist goblin reluctantly concedes that these two departures from the animated film and the Brothers Grimm original succeeded in making the story of Snow White relevant and more interesting to modern audiences. I mean, come on, have you seen the (good Lord) 1937 animated film recently? There is literally a 15 to 20-minute scene where the dwarves are washing themselves before dinner at Snow White’s behest. You can’t fault the movie itself, it came out at a time when its main purpose was to show off Disney’s superior technology in animation, and in 1937 this beautifully hand-drawn, multi-coloured cartoon complete with singing was groundbreaking stuff.  But as I am fortunate to have grown up in Disney’s golden age (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin, and Hercules and the other greats all came out when I was a child), I always thought the 1937 (I can’t get over that this came out nearly a hundred years ago) Snow White animated film and the songs in it were a bit boring. Without a doubt, I enjoyed the live action Snow White’s more complex plot points, comedic moments (of which the original Snow White had few) and funnier soundtrack much more.

My favorite song was the quite cleverly-written and funny “Princess Problems” sung by the Robin-hood type that stood in for the “prince” in the live action film. I’m so glad Disney hasn’t forgotten how to make clever music; like I said, I grew up in its golden age, and so the dismal soundtracks of Wish and Mufasa, in particular, quite upset me. I mean, compared to Elton John’s soundtrack in The Lion King, Mufasa’s songs sound like a six-year old wrote them. "Princess Problems" is at least on the level of say, the soundtrack of Tangled.

But I digress – normally the demotion from prince to potato thief would have annoyed the bejesus out of me… I guess we’re now in ‘prince-at-heart’ territory?  (rolls eyes) But the thing is, I wasn’t mad at this, once again, marked deviation from the originals. How could I be? The thief in the live action Snow White looked and acted exactly like Westley (Cary Elwes) from The Princess Bride! Don’t tell me that wasn’t deliberate, the resemblance was uncanny. I couldn’t be mad at this obvious homage to another Fantasy classic. On a lesser note, this departure also allowed the movie to weave another good-versus-evil plot layer and more characters (i.e., the Merry Men) into the story, which, like I said, made the movie more engaging overall.

Which leads me to another point. The people who made the live action Snow White obviously loved Fantasy. The depiction of the lively town at the start of the movie, the enchanted forest with the fairy creatures and its intelligent and super-cute wildlife, and this wonderful scene depicting the dwarves' powers to connect and light up the stone and gems inside the mountain where they mine and sing Heigh-ho, these are all Fantasy (and Dungeons & Dragons) mainstays! I think it was at this point that I was won over.

Except for the part where Gal Gadot finds out that Snow White is not dead as per her instructions and bursts into song as the evil queen. I was, to be quite frank, mildly horrified. Suddenly, I was not in a dreamlike, enchanted forest-type fantasy world, I was in Las Vegas. There was something… off-putting… about her song-and-dance number. I think this scene just showed Gal Gadot’s lack of theater training, when the entire movie clearly was theater-type. I am by no means an expert in acting methods so I am finding this difficult to articulate, but I have seen movies and I have seen theater productions, and theater actors have a special way of projecting their emotions and movements for an audience, and they have a special way of integrating singing into the story’s flow. Theater songs also have a certain cadence to them, which theater actors know how to bring to life. I think Snow White is very much a theater-type production, and Gal Gadot, while mind-bogglingly gorgeous as the evil queen must be, does not seem to have the theater-type experience to properly weave her character into the production. Her acting comes off as a bit jarring.  I mean, the evil queen in the original Snow White had an icy, scary dignity to her, and I think that the movie would have fared better if Gal Gadot had the theater-type acting ability to portray that. 

In comparison, Rachel Zegler clearly knew what the theater-type production required of her. Her singing and acting never feel overplayed, they feel, well, exactly right, for the theater-type Snow White that she was supposed to bring to life. After a quick Google, I can see that she does have quite a lot of theater experience, and it shows. Know that this pains me to say, as I didn’t know who Rachel Zegler was before this movie, but I have always loved Gal Gadot, and I still want her to star in the future live-action movie of one of my favorite science fiction books (another post on that soon), which will not be a theater-type production, and her character will be more of the Wonder Woman/intimidatingly beautiful action star role that she does so well.

But well, facts is facts, as they say.

So, after all this, this Elder Goblin’s conclusion is that all the internet trolling and bruhaha simply don’t matter. If a movie (or book, or series, whatever) is good Fantasy, then it is. Disney’s live-action Snow White is a good Fantasy film that your kids will enjoy, so I highly recommend that you take them to see it. If you happen to enjoy it to, well, I won’t tell anyone.

(at this point, I looked over to my side where my kids are playing and asked them, “which Snow White did you like better? The cartoon or the one we watched yesterday?” Their answer was “the Snow White we watched yesterday because it was so cool." I rest my case.)