‘Snow White’ Is Like Being Stuck in the Most Controversial Disney-Adult Nightmare Ever

Every movie is also a documentary of the moment in which it’s made — big up the French filmmaker behind that quote — and it’s way more interesting to think of this new, live-action Snow White as a time capsule for our through-the-looking-glass moment than a “fresh” take on a Disney staple. Thanks to comic strips, theatrical productions, and several early attempts to adapt this fairy tale for the screen (including the 1916 version a teen Walt Disney saw in Kansas City, Missouri, that left a formative impact on his artistic sensibility), the story of an exiled princess and her septet of pals was already well-known by the time Uncle Walt released his 1937 animated feature. His Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the one that changed film history and fully cemented the Mickey Mouse creator as a 20th-century icon, however, and though there have been both campy rom-com and mall-goth-friendly revisionist riffs on the story, this would be the official Disney 21st-century redo. Having turned most of its animated classics into A-list live-action extravaganzas, for better or worse (with the latter category currently winning by a 2-to-1 ratio), it was time to give the OG princess flick its flowers. What could go wrong?

The answers: Casting-choice trolling by racists. Clapbacks and sound bites that did its star no favors. Childish fans once again claiming their long-ago childhoods would somehow be ruined because, you know, “changes.” An ongoing culture war that an election made a gajillion times more volatile. Questions about whether making a movie in which little people are treated like retrograde caricatures was a cool thing to do in this day and age. Meanwhile, the new Snow White expressed opinions that angered pro-Israel factions, and the new Evil Queen pissed off pro-Palestinian activists. Welcome to family-friendly entertainment circa 2025.

Seriously, you could not ask for a better case study for Why We Can’t Have Nice Things Anymore, as well as Exhibit A for why even the most anodyne pop art is never 100 percent apolitical. And in the end, the controversy that’s been drummed up around this curiously lifeless retelling from director Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) will almost certainly be the only thing folks remember about this particular take on the fairest of them all. After the lights went down, the hope was that the brouhaha happening outside the theater would fade into the background and all that would matter would be what was happening onscreen. Instead, you may find yourself wishing that one-seventh of the high drama playing out behind the scenes had somehow made it into what feels like a nightmare pandering to Disney adults. Once upon a time, you might have been able to coast on the brand name alone and get away with something so indistinguishable, so desperate, so designed to court easy nostalgia. Not anymore.

The basics remain more or less the same: A princess is born. She’s beloved by the kingdom at large, for being so empathetic and kind. Mom dies. Enter a wicked stepmother (Gal Gadot), who initially appears to be nurturing and sweet. One mysterious-disappearance-of-the-king later, she declares herself Queen and imprisons the girl, forcing her to endless servitude and, worse, wear a bob haircut. Snow grows into a young woman (Rachel Zegler). One night, she spies a thief in the pantry, liberating a surplus of royal potatoes to feed his community. He’s Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), and quicker than you can say “people do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he is hungry,” this wannabe Robin Hood makes an appeal for charity before he splits. Later, after Jonathan is caught and chained to the castle doors, Snow helps him escape. You wouldn’t exactly say the dashing rogue is princely, despite the strong jawline and gorgeous head of hair. You could, however, describe him as charming.

Meanwhile, that damned magic mirror — the one that looks and sounds like a dead ringer from the Disneyland ride of yore — keeps telling the Queen she’ll never truly be the fairest of them all if Snow White is still in the picture. So she does what any narcissistic tyrant would do, which is take to social media and spread a lot of inflammatory lies in order to rile up the base. Apologies, we meant to say “hire a woodsman to kill Snow White in a forest.” Thankfully, the woodsman (Ansu Kabia) has a crisis of conscience and tells Snow to book it. She meets a coterie of CGI animals, finds an unoccupied house with a bed, takes a nap. The occupants return home. Hint: There are seven of them.

Gal Gadot in Snow WhiteGiles Keyte/Disney

About these gentlemen with the colorful, and quite literal names of Bashful, Sleepy, Grumpy, etc.: They are not referred to as dwarves. They are “magical creatures,” rendered in CGI and voiced by character actors of various shapes and sizes. You can see why Disney needed to address this problematic aspect of the fairy tale, even if you quickly find yourself cringing at how distracting and weirdly dissonant these key parts of Snow White’s journey from victim to angel of vengeance come off in the movie. We’re not proposing a better solution, just noting that these scenes still feel cringeworthy as hell. Ms. White is willing to teach Dopey — who’s glow-up into being a bullied holy fool with the most boyish of punims, and prizes sappy, puppy-dog expressions over your run-of-the-mill dopiness — how to whistle. But she’s thankfully not content to just clean up after these guys, or twiddle her thumbs until the day her prince comes. The former royal highness will be too busy leading the Resistance, alongside Jonathan and his ragamuffin group of bandits, to fight off all of the Queen’s men. This is the ass-kicking Disney princess we apparently need.

It’s not the gleeful deconstruction of the template that the original 1937 movie set into stone — be pretty and passive and patient, ladies, and eventually some bro will rescue you — that feels irksome, especially since those notions don’t feel like they carbon-date from the Hoover era so much as the Stone Age. No, what feels irritating about this Snow White is how it pats itself on the back for being so performatively progressive while being content to be safe, generic, and a little lethargic regarding everything else. Zegler has a lovely voice and, as West Side Story showed, can hold her own against stronger actors when needed. Yet she barely registers here, and other than nailing the Broadway-style pyrotechnics of “Waiting on a Wish,” one of the few new songs contributed by Benji Pasek and Justin Paul, her Snow White is pure vanilla extract. As for Gadot, she can’t quite decide whether her Evil Queen should be camp or chilling, and ends being neither. Her big number, “All Is Fair,” also suggests someone trying to split the difference vocally between Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich, before settling on something style-wise closer to Marilyn Manson.

Even the sets and costumes, all designed to mirror the visual plushness of the 1937 cartoon, give off less of a Magic-Kingdom-come to-life vibe and more of just Big Ren Faire Energy. The whole thing feels so bland and perfunctory to a fault that it’s surprising to think that this was the movie that caused such an uproar for nearly two years and a dozen news cycles. You can feel the strain of trying to appeal to everyone, court both the purists and the pro-modernization contingent, be as non-offensive as possible — and still manage to satisfy next to no one. This Snow White may not be the worst live-action adaptation of an animated touchstone, though it’s a strong contender for its blandest. The movie does earn points as a bedtime story, however, because it will definitely put you to sleep.

From Rolling Stone US.