Snow White Review

Evan D.

Rachel Zegler in Snow White (2025)

We are well beyond the point where anyone can reasonably expect much from a live action adaptation of a classic piece of Disney animation. Dozens of these glorified cash grabs have been dished out over the last decade and absolutely none of them have been good enough to even justify their own creation, let alone build on the original stories. And those were the easy ones, the slam dunks. Aladdin, Mulan, The Little Mermaid. These were the slam dunks and they ended up air balls. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came with layers of trouble when adapting for audiences nearly a century later. Snow White (2025) tries to adjust for the dated source material and ends up a disaster anyways. 

​Obviously the story of a helpless damsel wishing in a well for her prince to come is not the type of heroine that can or should lead a Disney film today. And thats before even getting into the band of stereotypical woodland dwarves that befriend her along the way. Instead, the new Snow White positions its titular character (Rachel Zegler) as a champion for the most beleaguered of her kingdom’s subjects. Her fairness references not just her beauty but rather her moral compass. When the wicked Queen (a truly wretched Gal Gadot) learns that Snow White’s fairness surpasses her own, she is driven from the castle and takes up with a group of magical dwarfs in the forest. 

While that basic contour sounds similar to the first animated feature film of all time, a lot has changed from the story Walt Disney brought to screens in 1937. This time the dwarfs are not the only group of seven that Snow White comes across. On her quest through the woods she befriends a group of seven bandits who fight in the name of her father, the deceased king. Rather than an anonymous prince, her love interest is the leader of these noble bandits (Andrew Burnap.) The film positions Zegler’s White as more of a fighter than the more matronly version of the animated version. While the 1937 version did have a few classic songs, this new version is more of a full blown musical. The final product aside, Disney did make a genuine effort to modernize a tremendously outdated film. 

It is conflicting to criticize that effort. Snow White does have its heart in the right place, at least as much as any outright cash grab from a mega corporation can (not much.) The ultimate problem is that the movie stinks. For all the effort to modernize a century old film, each of those attempts falls completely flat. 

Turning Snow White into a true musical is not a terrible idea in concept. The original had a few memorable songs but calling it a musical would be a stretch. Hiring the team behind La La Land and The Greatest Showman yielded another half dozen songs, none of which can hold a candle to either of the songs that return from the original film. Zegler shines performing Whistle While You Work and her tremendous voice elevates even the more mediocre new numbers she is assigned. The less said about Gadot’s singing the better. Still, its hard not to think that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on these abominable remakes couldn’t be better used developing the technology to revive Howard Ashman, the last man who was was truly able to write transcendent songs for Disney films. 

Let’s talk a little more about the actors at the heart of Snow White. I have less than zero time for the artificial blowback about Zegler, a Latina, as the title character. The movie invents some continent excuse for her name and beyond that just lets Zegler go. She’s fine. Her voice carries even the most forgettable songs even as the rest of her scenes are clearly set in front of green screens and acted against tennis balls. Praise for the performance would be too much but it cant have been an easy task. By contrast her counterpart it just dreadful. Gal Gadot cannot sing, despite this she is given a song that ends up as one of the worst sequences to the entire film. Every reaction she gives is so forced, not a moment she is on screen feels natural. Its a tough performance to watch.

Ultimately, the issues with Snow White run much deeper than the songwriting and performances. This version of White is a warrior for justice but nothing in the early exposition of this film builds her character into that. She feels, through no fault of Zegler’s charming performance, like little more than the outline of a person. Even the idea of a fair and just kingdom is conceptually oxymoronic.

This brings us neatly to the dwarfs. Peter Dinklage rightly questioned the place of characters that could fairly be described as demeaning in a modern Disney film. The solution the studio landed on was to forgo live actors and instead cast them as uncanny CGI monstrosities with vague magical powers. Not sure who was placated by this choice but the dwarf characters being sidelined does little to help or harm the film. 

What does it say that every attempt to modernize the first Disney classic ends in folly? A long-standing complaint of this site and accompanying podcast has been that these live action remakes are nothing more than carbon copies of their original source material. Tracing the outlines without any of the depth of their muses. That Snow White sets out on its own path and still falls woefully short is instructive. These films have no reason to exist, even when updated. Kids cant see anything else in theaters but still would be better served watching the animated originals, each and every one of which was made with more care than these hamfisted remakes. 

All this said I do appreciate that Snow White attempts to correct for the biases and stereotypes of 1930s America. What this film makes clear is that trying to make a modern version of a beloved classic is not enough. People love Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because, even now, the movie is a gorgeous piece of art. You can go on Disney+ right now fire up that film and see the painstaking detail that made the movie beloved and won it an honorary Oscar. The 1937 film was clearly a labor of love while this new version could never be confused for anything other than a craven cash grab. For all Rachel Zegler pours into her character, she is never more than a half-assed attempt to absorb kids today into the Disney ecosystem. 

Snow White, at the end of the day, is not the worst of Disney’s live action remakes but it is incredibly illustrative of their inherent problems. With a better Evil Queen than Gadot this might have actually been passable. It still would not have absolved the film nor the studio from a tremendously ill advised endeavor. My hope is that Disney, once a pinnacle of artistry in filmmaking, can once again find value in original storytelling. I do not have much confidence in this happening. If Snow White is the best we can expect then we should not expect much. 3/10