Snow White And The Huntsman
It’s rare that (very) poor casting can result in the female villain being more appealing than her counterpart, ruining the purpose of trying to create another franchise with an actress whom very few found appealing: Kristen Stewart, she of the flat footed heroine in the Twilight films who literally and figuratively became known for her blank slate style of acting, reciting dialogue that resonates with no emotional qualities whatsoever. And her adversary? Charlize Theron, the radiantly beautiful blonde who had paid her dues and helped redefine strong female performances with an Oscar to show for it. Natural aesthetics would dictate Stewart as the brooding villain facing off against Theron’s red hot charisma with Charlize winning out to save the day. But no: here we get Kristen Stewart as Snow White and Charlize Theron as The Queen, complete with mirror. Snow’s early life was a tough one, as she brings a diseased bird to her mother and hands it to her, with her mother falling deathly sick and then dying horribly. The crafty Snow has already planted the daggers in her daddy’s heart, but whoa! The King goes out to check on a traffic stop, only to find Charlize Theron riding in the back. HOT DOG! After taking a quick piss on his dead wife’s grave, The King announces that he will marry this stranger THE VERY NEXT DAY as even the extras playing his consorts can visibly be seen laughing at him in the background. With Little Snow safely locked away for possible adrenochrome extraction, Charlize wastes little time doing the kingdom the biggest favor possible by cutting the lovesick bastard’s heart out and eating it. She becomes Queen with mostly little resistance from the locals, since it’s said that she possesses psychosomatic abilities to kill from afar. Joined by her sniveling brother (Sam Spruell, looking like Gary Busey after a 10 day coke binge), Queen Charlize begins fairly dividing up everything amongst the local populace and giving everyone a fair shake, which won’t abide when we meet The Seven Dwarfs (led by Bob Hoskins as Doc), all of whom are big name yet normal sized actors shrunken by CGI (including Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, and Nick Frost) to look like little people, prompting calls of outrage from The Leprechaun Himself, Warwick Davis, who likened it to Al Jolson (a white guy) putting on blackface to sing Mammy, possibly putting a Leprechaun hex on the project that would claim Hoskins’ life two years after its release in 2012 (at least in Time Bandits they used real midgets, a fact not lost here as this film at times copies little bits and pieces of Terry Gilliam’s classic). Here, the Dwarves take on the controversial role of being de facto political power broker / guerilla rebels looking for some trouble (complete with an unintelligible dialect) when Stewart’s Snow (having escaped after a botched rape attempt by The Busey Brother) gives them the political collateral they need to rally up the other outsiders to overthrow their beautiful Queen. Into all this stumbles Chris Hemsworth as The Huntsman, originally paid to cut up Snow but instead falling in love with her, since Snow has the ability to captivate the animals and more regressive lifeforms, so Hemsworth now becomes her passive male BFF, following her around with a defeated pout that would even make Snow’s own dead dad wince. Hemsworth and his pout would come into play here when needed in Snow’s sick little plot, including having him take on the Prince Charming role where his love kiss would revive Snow. Still, it’s all about the girl vs girl showdown, neither of whom are good people but at least it’s easier to root for the more charismatic one, AND IT’S NOT SNOW WHITE! The film works overtime to show us Queen Charlize’s delicious evil, such as when a crazed farmboy pulls a knife on her and tries to hurt her, after which Queen Charlize has the boy’s dad summoned not to watch the strapping young lad be seduced Ilsa style by the impressed Queen but rather to witness the use of her powers to induce a fatal heart attack in the would be boy assassin and keel him over (a understandable gesture following an assassination attempt) even as the film departs from the original Grimm Fairy Tales texts by revealing that Queen Charlize actually controls over half of the world by this point, having seduced and destroyed several other weak Kings before she got to Snow’s dad. As for Snow Stewart, with her blank eyed stare and gaping mouth that causes one to wonder if cloning is actually possible, she keeps the leash tight on the poor Huntsman Hemsworth, whom at times looks like he’d like to take his axe to all of the misfits around him (starting with The Dwarfs and doing so while using the most brutality), leaving Snow for last of course after putting up with her shit the whole movie. Even worse is when they snap Snow Stewart into a Joan Of Arc costume and make her a respected military leader, a literal raping not only of Grimm, but also the 1937 animated classic where the Snow character was sharply (yet softly) defined as the absolute sweetest, nicest person you’ll ever meet, and certainly not somebody to draw a sword and give a laughably off kilter Mel Gibson In Braveheart speech, leading the troops (and Huntsman Hemsworth making a remarkably adept dog on the leash, especially in combat) into battle scenes that use so much Shaky Cam that it barely succeeds in hiding the fact that there is not really all that much fighting going on in these battle scenes at all. When it gets to Snow Stewart and Queen Charlize, we honestly have to lean towards Charlize on this one, since little Snow had killed her mother before Charlize had snuck in the back door on her bitchmeat father and cured his “loneliness” before sending him straight to Hell smoking. But here, Snow Stewart wins because The Grimms had said so. Ironically, Liberty Ross, who played Snow’s ill fated mother early in the film, was married to director Rupert Sanders. Director Sanders engaged in an ill advised sexual relationship with his pure as ivory Snow White, resulting in his wife divorcing him and Stewart being told that now there will be no franchise out of this nor sequel money for her due to the mini scandal brought on by her behavior. Huntsman Hemsworth DID get a sequel out of it, but this franchise was dead in the water after that. In the end, when you cast one of the most beautiful actresses of the last 50 years as your evil, witchcraft spouting villainess, make sure you can at least get an actress of equal or greater appeal and charisma so that we can have a showdown that we care about…
4/10