“Snow White” and the Seven Dwarfs” has a long and storied history in the annals of film. It came out 88 years ago from the incredible mind and talents of Walt Disney. It’s been one of those animated films that hasn’t stood the test of time, though.This day and age people want to nitpick everything, and so this amazing movie has been one of the things online that has been getting some criticism.  Not for how the original film has helped create an entire kingdom and world around it that kids from all ages could come and enjoy, but for the casting and labeling of some specific characters. Disney inevitably was going to make a live-action remake of this classic like they’ve done with so many of their classics  up until now. Nothing is sacred these days.

Snow White (Rachel Zegler/Emilia Raucher) is born and lives as a child in a happy kingdom. Her parents try to keep things light and gleeful. The citizens sing songs and dance while also making pies. Everything is good until the queen, Snow White’s mother, dies. Her father meets a new woman who takes over his life. Things aren’t as happy in the land anymore. Then Her father mysteriously passes away, and she’s stuck cleaning all the time. When she meets a stranger, named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) trying to steal potatoes he opens her eyes to what is really going on in the kingdom and how people truly feel about the new Queen (Gal Gadot). They don’t like her very much, and the kingdom that was once happy has now gone into misery and despair. You know the rest of the story.

I’ve been hit or miss on the live-action Disney remakes in the past. Some of them like Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast I’ve loved, and others like Pinocchio and Mulan I didn’t like that much. Most of the time, they’ve been decent. It’s not as good as the originals, but it’s pretty entertaining. This one is in a similar vein. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great either. There are some redeeming qualities that I liked about Snow White that I’ll get into.

Mark Webb is a director who had a hit and miss career thus far. (500) Days of Summer and Gifted are phenomenal from my humble perspective. His two “The Amazing Spider-Man” movies are not so much. He returned to good form, though, in his first musical, technically not because he’s done music videos before. He was able to create memorable new songs with the help of Pesek and Paul while also infusing the original songs into the screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson. Even though this animated film was shorter in length, the new songs and so forth extend the running time to a respectable hour and fifty minutes. This film flowed very well, and I didn’t feel that it was being stretched out at all.

The aforementioned song numbers are easily the best part of the movie. The Classics songs sung by the Dwarfs, “Heigh Ho” and “Whistle While We Work” are two of my favorite moments in the film along with the cold opening number of, new song,“Good Things Grow”. That got the feel of the movie off to a good start. My favorite number of the entire film was the new song “Princess Problems “ sung by both Zegler and Burnap. They had fantastic chemistry in this scene. Overall, I enjoyed the musical numbers, even the one sung by Gadot, who isn’t much of a singer.

There are two things that have gotten film Twitter or the online sphere all fired up about this film.Those are Zegler being cast in the lead role of this film. Everybody said she wasn’t white, so why should she be playing Snow White. I say what difference does it makes if she looks white and can do what the director wants her to do. Which is to sing, act, and dance. She does all those fantastically . People have this problem with giving roles that are traditionally white roles to other races. I don’t have any issues with that if they can do the job better than white actress could. I’m sure many auditioned for the part, and she got it.

The second thing is that people are online complaining about Gadot’s politics regarding the war in Israel. She’s an Israeli actress, so why wouldn’t she support her own country? I am able to separate the actress from playing a character in a movie from who they are on the outside. One has nothing to do with the other. Even though in this case she’s playing a villain. That probably doesn’t work in her favor. I thought she was fine in the role and exuded the sinister traits she needed to be the evil queen. I didn’t see Gadot. I saw the character, which was quite evil if I do say so myself.

One more element I think I should mention in the film is the CGI of the motion-capture characters, the Dwarfs. They aren’t called Dwarfs in the movie, I wonder why that was? Maybe Peter Dinklage complaining had something to do with it. Who knows? The first trailer that the Dwarfs or rather little people were in had some wonky looking CGI on them. Since then and now that I’ve seen the film, I can say the CGI on them looks very good. After the first time I saw them on the scene, I had to adjust my eyes, but I didn’t notice anything about their look after that. They blended in nice with the live-action characters and the scenery in the background and sets. Honestly, I had no problems with the way these characters looked. The animals thought you could tell they were computer generated. That’s not that big a deal, though.

There was one more  thing I noticed in the story that I thought needed mentioning. Snow White wore a necklace that she got from her father that said Fearless, Loyal, Brave, and True. This is important to me because these are traits we should all aspire to in this day and age. In a world where lying, cowardness, backstabbing, and complaining are the norms, we should look ourselves in the mirror, no pun intended,  and say what we can do to be better people, Americans and husband’s, wives and kids. The country needs us to be better. We can be better and we should be better. This message is that the movie didn’t get lost on me at all. Hopefully, parents will see this in the context of the film and talk about it with their kids and so forth. It needs to be addressed.

Overall, I thought Snow White was a good movie. I thought the musical numbers, the old songs, and especially “Princess Problems “ were fantastic. The performances, specifically from Zegler and Gadot, were good. They both played their characters up to the standard. I would hope any actress in their place would do. I didn’t think the CGI little people distracted me at all after their first introduction.  The message of the story still holds up after all these years, and this is a worthy successor to the original that started it all 88 years ago. This is one of the good Disney live-action remakes. I hope parents take their kids to this film and enjoy it for what it is. A good time at the movies! I did!

3 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen