The first animated feature film from Walt Disney is a classic, and any attempt to better it with a remake is never going work, nevertheless there came this one, directed by Black Beauty director and writer of Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas, Caroline Thompson. Basically, sticking more to the Brother Grimm source, Josephine (Vera Farmiga) is blessed to be pregnant with a baby, but dies during childbirth, and father John (Tom Irwin) is left alone to care for the little girl. He gets caught in a snow storm, and collapses believing it is the end for him and his baby Snow White, but his tears wake the Green-Eyed One, or The Grandfather/Granter of Wishes (Clancy Brown) below him who grants him three wishes. Wish one is milk, and the other two wishes are a kingdom to rule and raise a family, and a queen by his side, the Green-Eyed One owes his ugly sister Elspeth (Miranda Richardson) a wish. So he turns her into the beautiful Queen of the kingdom, and with the help of a piece of broken mirror glass in the eye, John does fall for her. Meanwhile there are the seven magical rainbow dwarfs, named after the days of the week from the famous poem, red Monday (Michael Gilden), orange Tuesday (Mark J. Trombino), yellow and tall Wednesday (Tomorrow Never Dies' Vincent Schiavelli), green Thursday (Penny Blake), blue Friday (Martin Klebba), indigo Saturday (Warwick Davis) and leader violet Sunday (Twin Peaks' Michael J. Anderson), who is encased by Elspeth in marble. Sixteen year later, Snow White (EuroTrip's Kristin Kreuk) is grown up, Elspeth has pretty much taken over the kingdom with King John neglecting his daughter, but the Queen craves a new younger husband. With the magic of the mirrors on the wall the queen makes sure that she is still the fairest of them all, but one day the mirror tells that Snow White is the fairest, and the evil Queen is ready to kill her beautiful niece. Snow White runs away when she realises she is in danger, and when he gets half his body released from the marble, Sunday takes her to the safety of the dwarf house in the woods. The Queen believes the man she has got to kill her has done so and put her heart in the box, which she cooks and eats, but the mirror reveals she is still alive, and John ends up being trapped in one of them through a trap. After trying to suffocate Snow White with a sash, the Queen decides to use her small magic mirror to disguise herself as the princess's dead mother, create a half poison, half edible apple to give her. So with the dwarfs out of the house, Snow White is tricked into eating the poison apple, and Elspeth goes back to the kingdom to transform back to her beautiful self, but she has gone back to being ugly. In anger that the Granter of Wishes won't help she smashed her source of power, the small mirror, therefore releasing John, restoring Sunday's full body, waking all the gnomes, and restoring Prince Alfred (Tyron Leitso) from his bear state. In the end the gnomes strangle the evil Elspeth to death, and Snow White wakes with the true love kiss of the prince, the dwarfs go off to see Sleeping Beauty, and they all live happily ever after. Also starring José Zúñiga as Hector. Richardson enjoys her role as the typical pantomime female villain obsessed with her looks, Kreuk is beautiful but very dull to watch, one or two of the dwarf actors get their moments, and Irwin is most boring as the king. The story has darker undertones compared to the more colourful animated equivalent before, but that is maybe one of its main flaws, overall it is a silly live action remake fairytale. Adequate!
